


The Golden Sun

by shini_amaryllis



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Al just wants everyone to get along, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Assassination Attempt(s), Ed has longer hair than in canon, Ed just wishes he had the upper hand when making out with Ling, Found Family, Fu and Lanfan just want Ling to calm his tits, Ishbal | Ishval, Lanfan is ace af, Ling just wants to kiss Ed every hour of the day, M/M, POC Elrics, Parental Roy Mustang, Politics, Roy just wants to keep Ed from getting himself killed and Ed gives no fucks, Roy trying to keep his sons alive, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Very AU, Xerxes | Cselkcess, Xingese politics, also very gay, its so plot heavy its ridiculous, omg and they were roomates, the Elrics are mixed on both sides, the edling soulmate au, there is almost nothing canon about this guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-05-07 06:33:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 83,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14665320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shini_amaryllis/pseuds/shini_amaryllis
Summary: There was only one thing Ed needed to do: find a way to get Al's body back. He wasn't going to worry about cheerful soulmates, narcissistic colonels, or violent Xingese assassins, but life had a funny way of fucking with his plans. Ed was sure it was Ling's fault in every possible way. Plot-heavy Edling AU.Part I: Chapters 1-9





	1. A Perfect Circle

**Author's Note:**

> This is the edling soulmate au that's been a longtime coming if you've been following the posts on my fanfic tumblr. It was originally just a fluffy piece but then the plot happened and now it's a full-fledged fic.
> 
> The soulmate side of the fic is only going to be mentioned occasionally at the start, until Ling shows up, but Ed and Ling is very much the pairing of this fic. Its basically a plot AU with a side of soulmate at this point.

Edward Elric was born without a soulmark, but he didn't stay that way for long. His mother liked to tell the story about how it showed up when he was a few months old, the day his soulmate was born. The soulmark on the side of Ed's throat was simple, as soulmarks went, a thick circle with a solid dot in the center. It was the Xingese symbol for the sun. Maybe his soulmate was from Xing, or maybe things like soulmarks were really random, after all, Mom never met her soulmate, she hadn't even married Dad. Besides, not everyone had soulmates, Ed knew that well-enough. Dad hadn't, but Al's was a pair of intertwining snakes squarely between his shoulder blades.

Ed liked to remember the good old days as fondly as he could without tinging the memories with pain and loss. Like how he used to brush his mother's hair and ask her if his hair would ever be as long.

She'd laughed then, but she stopped requiring them to get their hair cut regularly, though Al still liked his short.

His hair had been just long enough to collect into a small ponytail at the base of his skull when she fell ill and died just as suddenly.

He had so much bitterness at a young age, especially concerning his father, but the one constant in his life was looking in the mirror and seeing the circle patterned against his skin. But finding his soulmate was never really a priority, not after Mom died, not after Al lost his body, not after he literally became half the boy he used to be.

(Al never spoke about his soulmark after he lost his body, but he had no way of knowing that in Xing on that very day Mei Chang awoke from a nightmare, terrified to find that her mark had vanished in the night and sobbing at the murder she thought her father had committed)

Al was his focus after their failed human transmutation. Ed didn't care what happened to him if it meant his little brother would regain the body he'd lost from Ed's conceit, from Ed's belief that they could recall the dead.

His soulmate would never know him if doing so cost him his life, and Ed thought he was okay with that, but he was never completely sure.

* * *

Ed was eleven and recovering from two amputations - _equivalent exchange, little alchemist-_  when he was given an opportunity to get it all back.

Roy Mustang had hoisted him by the front of his shirt out of the wheelchair to yell at him about the transmutation circle he'd found in their house, and not five minutes later the military man was giving Ed an option to take his life in his hands and walk through a path paved in mud if he had to.

For Al he'd become a Dog of the Military, a State Alchemist. He'd search the earth for the Philosopher's Stone, he'd search it until he was  _bled dry._

* * *

Ed was twelve, sitting alone in the train heading for Central with a letter from the newly promoted Colonel Roy Mustang to explain things and ease his way into participating in the State Exam that certified State Alchemists.

He could still remember the conversation he'd had with Mustang over the phone.

"Lieutenant Colonel-"

" _Its Colonel now. I was promoted while you were being slow,"_  Mustang's air of superiority was easy to hear and Ed hoped his audible growl was clear as well.  _"What?"_

"Why're you being so helpful?" Ed had so much doubt and disdain towards the military. Winry and Granny Pinako didn't like them because the military had been the one to escort Winry's parents to Ishval when they'd gone to help the wounded, and it had been the military to inform them about their deaths.

Ed didn't like the military, and if he'd had any other option with researching how to get Al's body back, he would've gone any other way, but as it was the military did seem to be the best option.

There had been a long silence following that before the Colonel skated over his question like it hadn't even been asked.  _"We'll see if you're as good as you think you are, Edward Elric_." And then he hung up on Ed, leaving him blinking at the receiver.

It seemed like the Colonel was going through an awful lot of effort, if you asked Ed, and no one did that if they weren't getting anything in return. Equivalent Exchange.  _Right?_

Ed leaned heavily on his shoulder, watching the fields pass as the train rumbled over the tracks. Even after the year of rehabilitation Ed still couldn't get used to not being able to feel anything under his hand or his foot. But one arm and one leg made of flesh was enough for him if it meant Al's soul remained bonded to that armor until he could get Al his body back.

With the military's resources he would be one step closer, that much he knew for sure.

Ed pulled the glove off his flesh hand, bringing it up to rub against where his soulmark was. He knew without looking in a mirror where it was despite there being no obvious ridges or curves for his fingers to follow. Ed had grown up with the mark permanently etched on his skin.

The mark was the reason he'd learned to speak Xingese in the first place. At first the symbol had interested him. Mom had laughed when they'd looked it up together, remarking how 'sun' made sense for him. She'd tapped under his eye, on top of his head, before pressing a kiss to his sun-dark cheek.

He wasn't even sure if his soulmate was even from Xing, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time, so…

Ed twisted a lock of his loose bangs around one finger with a sigh.

He wasn't going to worry about the whole soulmate thing until Al was back to normal.

* * *

Central was a bit like Dublith, where Teacher and Sig lived, only more bustling, with cars speeding down the streets and more of a smog in the air. It wasn't like Resembool at all.

Central Command was a massive building bearing the symbol of Amestris, a dragon on a large flag, and Ed lost count of the number of figures he saw in that blue uniform.

There were a pair of guards at the front gates that eyed Ed as he walked past, looking for the office to give the letter Colonel Mustang had written. Thankfully he found it without too much trouble; Ed thought he was a bit too anxious to formulate a sentence.

The woman in the office smiled kindly when she took the letter from him, read it more speedily than Ed could've, though she looked unsurprised. Ed supposed the Colonel might've given her a heads up. "Edward Elric. Looks like you're just in time for the State Exam. Take the doors to the left. Any available seat will do. Once the written exam is concluded, you will be graded immediately. If you pass you will move onto the practical exam where you will display your alchemy to several officials, do you understand?"

Her eyes were sharp. She reminded him vaguely of Teacher, though not nearly as terrifying. "Y-yes, ma'am."

She smiled and pointed him in the right direction and Ed practically ran to get to the doors, only just stopping short of making a fool of himself, cautiously opening the doors and entering.

There weren't very many people in the room, which was made more obvious by its largeness, but Ed could tell that he was easily the youngest. There was even a guy with long white hair and wrinkles, but most appeared to be middle-aged. Ed could see one particularly tired man with glasses that shone in the lighting.

Ed opted to steer clear of everyone and anyone, flicking his long braid over his shoulder as he sat down, trying not to feel too small (He mentally beat himself at the use of the word).

There were a few military personnel at the front of the room, a short stack of papers between them and a watch to keep an eye on the time.

"I didn't think they let little girls in to this exam," Ed's keen ears heard behind him.

He didn't know which pissed him off more. The fact that he was assumed to be a girl, or the fact that he was called  _little_. His hair was long, he knew it was; it was longer than Winry's. But long hair wasn't an uncommon thing in Resembool and he knew that that bastard Hohenheim had long hair too (Ed tried not to think about Hohenheim too much, it just made him angrier and angrier).

Ed whipped around, fury arching across his face like a cresting wave. "You got something to say,  _fucker?"_  he absolutely snarled.

If Al had been there, Ed was sure he would've been up and restraining him before he barely got his ass out of the seat, but Al wasn't here, Al was in Resembool, waiting for Ed to succeed, waiting for Ed to get certified so they could begin their search to regain their ( _Al's_ ) bodies.

As it was, Ed was ready to leap out of the chair and strangle the motherfucker but a voice rang out swiftly. "Quiet down!" One of the men at the front of the room barked and Ed twisted regretfully back around, his dark glower making it clear what his intentions had been to face the front. "Exam booklets will be passed out shortly. You will have three hours to complete the exam."

"No gloves allowed," one of the examiners said as they handed Ed a booklet and Ed looked down at his hands regretfully before complying, baring one hand of flesh and another of automail. The examiner appeared surprised, but he didn't comment on it.

"Your time begins… _now."_

Ed twisted his pencil in his left hand, suddenly wishing he'd worked more on his handwriting since he's had to switch to his left hand since the amputation of his right. Then he breathed out, opened the booklet and readied his pencil.

He's was going to kick this test's  _ass_  and no one was gonna be able to stop him.

* * *

Ed twitched impatiently in his seat as the proctor -the woman he'd given his letter from Mustang to earlier- went through his exam right in front of him, grading it without looking up.

She wasn't making a lot of marks…that was a good sign,  _right?_

Then she finally put the packet down to survey him. "Congratulations, Edward Elric, you've passed the written exam."

A relieved smile broke across his lips. He couldn't really stop it from forming.

"We'll just send you off to the practical portion. If the proctors find your demonstration satisfactory, you'll be granted the title of State Alchemist."

One step closer to getting Al's body back. Ed could take  _anything_  they threw at him.

He followed another woman in the military uniform out of the room and into another spacious room.

There were a lot of people, most sitting on the balcony for the floor above. Ed's eyes flicked over the gathering of people. He could easily make out Mustang with his dark hair and eyes; he hadn't changed much since the day he had dragged him out of his wheelchair and changed the course of his life.

Ed shifted his eyes back to the front before he caught Mustang's smirk. The kid stood out like a beacon of sunlight in the darkness, with the blond hair and golden eyes, completely clothed in black. The fire he'd seen in the young amputee he'd shouted at a year ago had grown brighter and threatened to consume his entire being.

The two soldiers on either side of Ed saluted suddenly as a man entered. He was older than either of them, in the same uniform, but his was far more decorated. His thick mustache matched the dark hair just starting to gray and there were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth.

"Ah," the man said, "would that be a steel prosthetic?"

Ed touched his flesh hand to his metal wrist. Prosthetics weren't uncommon, but he couldn't exactly go around saying he'd lost it performing human transmutation. "'Happened during the Eastern Conflict," he smoothed over.

"I see," the man said. "So you had a rough time of it in Ishval?"

Ed's brow furrowed and he looked to the man on his right, pointing at the one who was speaking. "Who's he?"

The military personnel made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat. "That's the Fuhrer King Bradley."

Their leader, huh? Ed had never seen him before, let alone heard his name. He narrowed his eyes.

"Thank you," the Fuhrer said, "you may proceed with the examination."

"Do you need something to draw transmutation circles with?"

"I don't need that sort of thing," Ed said, raising his hands and clapping them together with a resounding ring before crouching to his feet, light crackling around him as he drew his hands up, bringing with them a spear made from the floor.

He could hear the mutterings of how he'd performed the transmutation without a circle, but all he did was grip the spear, narrow his eyes and race forward.

No one could say that Ed wasn't impertinent, with his spear at the throat of his country's leader, with numerous guns aimed at his person and not a single care in the world.  _Foolish_  or  _idiotic_  might suit him better.

"You know, there are some people who would see this as a good way to assassinate a VIP," Ed said, eyes sharp and bright, "in the future you might want to rethink how you conduct these examinations."

The Fuhrer raised a hand and the soldiers who had pointed their guns at Ed relaxed, drawing the weapons back. Ed decided as a show of good faith he'd do the same, drawing back his spear and settling its end against the ground, the tip pointing straight up.

The Fuhrer cupped his chin thoughtfully. "Hm, a curious thought."

" _You disrespectful fool! You're disqualified!"_

Ed barely had time to worry about those words from the soldier when the Fuhrer spoke over him.

"Don't decide that on your own," he said sharply to the man, "I understand he had no problem in the written exam and psychological test…from what I've seen, his skills are impressive, and he's got  _guts."_

The Fuhrer turned away and Ed frowned. "He just doesn't know how big the world is."

And it was only then half of Ed's spear for to the ground, cut by a sharp blade and Ed tried not to gape too much, staring after the Fuhrer who now had an unsheathed sword at his side.

 _When the_  hell _did he pull that out?_

* * *

"What's with that look?" Colonel Mustang looked to his right-hand Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye was considering him with an expression he couldn't quite place.

"That was rather uncharacteristic of you, sir," was all Riza said, but his arched eyebrow earned him a further response. "I was expecting you to hold their mistake over his head."

Roy couldn't understand why an eleven and ten year old child would have performed alchemy's greatest taboo, and he'd been an alchemist a _long_  time, had watched others fall in battle, especially in Ishval. He'd lost his teacher.

Edward had been wary, standing before him not moments earlier as Roy gave him the watch that all State Alchemists possessed and his official code name, issued by Fuhrer King Bradley himself (Fullmetal was a bit  _much_ , Roy thought, but he didn't doubt the name would suit him).

"He had the option to choose from a number of supervising officers," Roy said instead, looking out the window to watch the small golden-haired boy take the steps down. "Seems strange he'd pick someone who yelled at him the first time he met him."

Riza arched an eyebrow. "Maybe he chose you because you're the only one on the list he knows even slightly."

"And you think that shouting at someone the first time you meet them is a basis for a good relationship?" Roy asked archly. "No, that's not it." More likely he thought Roy was going to blab and a good way to keep him from talking would be to settle at working under him.

Roy doubted that there was anyone Ed hated more than  _himself_ right now.

There was no pride or anything of the like when Roy'd given him the watch, just careful determination and dark,  _dark_  pain. The certification was only a means to an end for him and Roy knew it. Roy had enlisted in the military with a purpose, and it was still a purpose he believed in, despite the blood on his hands.

The kid had a sharp tongue and the skills to back it up, but just how much Roy wasn't yet sure.

One thing was for certain, though, things were about to get  _interesting._

* * *

Ed was too wrapped up in his thoughts as he descended the stairs and headed out of the main gates, looking left and right to avoid getting hit by a car before dashing across the street that he didn't notice the attention he'd garnered.

The man had done a double-take at the sight of him, before raising a hand and snapping a quick picture, highlighting the side of Ed's neck as he'd turned, the soulmark on his throat clear black against sun-dark skin.

And he had no idea the significance of the moment or the picture or even his soulmark.

Edward Elric continued to walk, unaware of the target that had just been painted on his back.

* * *

The Emperor of Xing was not a kind or even a merciful man, that much had been obvious the day he assumed control of the country. He had a wife from each of the fifty clans of Xing and had once had twenty-four sons and nineteen daughters, but no longer. Assassinations were becoming commonplace and he found himself unsurprised and uncaring and the loss of Huang Zhao and Yun Song, the respective heir and heiress of two of the largest clans in Xing. More would fall before the end, he was certain of it, but it wasn't the dead that worried him, it was his twelfth son, Ling Yao that did.

The Yao clan was rather large and rumors had easily spread of Ling Yao's soulmark.

The Emperor had already had the soulmate of the Han, Tang, Sui, and Wu heirs and heiresses respectively killed in secret, another wouldn't be an issue.

What he liked even less was the symbol on his son's chest, the Xingese symbol of the sun, one of the symbols of the Emperor. The idea of the squalling infant succeeding him made him want to wretch.

Surprisingly, though, he never found Ling Yao's soulmate within Xing, so he sent his spies to other countries. The Emperor wasn't willing to let even one soulmate slip through the cracks; he'd have all of them killed before any of his offspring hit adulthood and he'd accept nothing less.

But it was years before he heard anything about someone bearing the matching mark to Ling Yao. In that time Mei Chang's mark on the center of her palm had vanished, which was a relief because the Emperor was already expending so much effort for one soulmate that two would be irritating. (The Qian and Xi heiresses had long since lost their soulmates to the Emperors assassins)

One was successful from Amestris, sending a photograph back of a boy with sun-kissed skin and golden hair and eyes, wearing a crimson coat. The picture was of the boy alone, his head turned, the mark on his neck clear to see, identical in every way to Ling Yao's.

It was enough for him to order his assassin to kill the boy on sight the next time he saw him.

The Emperor would be taking no chances.

An offspring with an imperial symbol as his soulmark with a soulmate blessed by the sun with golden hair and eyes that people of Xing would consider to be a perfect being…it would be better if they never met. It would be better if they  _both_ died.

But was he so cold-hearted that he would have his own son be killed, if necessary?

The answer, as always, was a quick and resolute  _yes._

* * *

Ling Yao was born with a soulmark directly over his heart, a circle with a dot in the center.  _The sun._  Fuu told him that it probably meant that his soulmate was from Xing and that it was a good sign. The sun was a symbol of the Emperor…the Emperor who was Ling's father, who he only met once, the day he came to examine the mark over his heart.

It was only later that Fu explained that his father had any soulmates of his children found and killed. Soulmarks were a dangerous thing to have and gave people silly ideas about love and their place in the world. The Emperor liked inspiring that kind of fear and Ling  _hated_ him.

He hoped the Emperor never found his soulmate.

Ling was sure that he'd only felt true fear one day when he was eleven, when the mark on his chest faded suddenly so that the rich black had become a faint grey. Fading marks, everyone knew, meant that your soulmate was dying.

Terror ran through his veins instead of blood. Their luck had run out, he thought, the Emperor had finally succeeded and Ling would have to get used to the idea that the one the gods considered his equal, the soul akin to his own, was gone.

It took a few days, though, but the color returned to the mark and Ling would remember the profound relief at the sight of the mark on his chest, black once more.

Unfortunately for them both, however, it would not be the last time either witnessed their marks fading almost completely.

* * *

In Amestris, Edward Elric flicked his braid down his back and straightened the red coat that would soon be considered his trademark, gripping his trunk, full of his meager positions, while extending a hand in time with Al's as they waved goodbye to Winry and Granny, ready to start the next chapter of their life that would lead them down the path of returning their bodies to normal once more.

In Xing, Ling Yao dutifully followed Fu's careful direction as he guided his new dao to follow the movement of his arm, to become an extension of his arm.

Though their paths were separate now, fate had a funny way of guiding people together when they needed it most, and it would only be then that Edward Elric would be able to take comfort in the presence of his soulmate, but for now it was safer that neither knew of each other's presence, a fact both would remark on later in life.

They were part of a perfect circle, alone and winding until the end was reached, right where it began, and one day the circle would be complete.

But for now, they both started on their separate journeys under the golden sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First chapter is done! Let me know what you guys think! This is a very plot-fic, now, and incredibly AU, so expect to see a lot of scene changes. You’ll see a lot of the Mustang gang from the start, but the focus is on the Elrics mostly, with just occasional moments with Ling up until he’s actually introduced. There’s gonna be a lot of Parental feels with the Mustang gang, that’s so sure :)


	2. The Chopper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa, this is insane! The response to this fic literally made my day and I couldn't be more pleased! Since its been brought up a few times, I should address that no, this fic has nothing to do with a game of the same name, its very much an FMA fanfic :)

"That's the fifth one in a month. He's speeding up; the time between kills is decreasing."

The sheet was drawn back, and Roy took note of the long blonde hair stained with blood, soaking the rest of the body where it lay in pieces.

The killer who had been nicknamed 'The Chopper' by the press was certainly making a mess of East City. They'd started finding chopped bodies in the city two months ago, always women and always with long blonde hair. This wasn't a woman though; the body couldn't have belonged to a girl more than ten or eleven.

Roy thought Ed's hair had to be about as long, though he was absolutely certain the fiery alchemist wasn't as tall.

"Is that why Central sent you down here, Hughes?"

Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes returned the sheet before making a gesture for the MPs to take the body away. "C'mon, Roy, can you at least _admit_  you missed me?"

Roy rolled his eyes and sighed. He could see Hughes' soulmark peeking out of the edge of his collar, the simplistic curve of an anchor that matched the one on Roy's right hand, hidden under the gloves baring his transmutation circle. Not all soulmates were romantic, everyone knew that, and theirs certainly was platonic…even if Hughes used it as an excuse to get a little too up in Roy's business.

Hughes sobered. "It's got nothing to do with you personally, it's just that the Investigations team here isn't as good as mine."

Roy was guessing that he was enjoying his new promotion and being placed in charge of the Investigations Division at Central.

"What's the total kill count at now?"

"Eleven, that we know of," Roy walked with him back to the car, Lieutenant Hawkeye saluting them both as they got close before clamoring into the back seat. "I'm guessing you'll be wanting their files?"

"That would help, yeah." Hughes grinned as Hawkeye started the car and took them off in the direction of Eastern Command. "I also heard a very loud rumor that you've got a young up and coming State Alchemist under you now."

Roy's eyebrow twitched. " _Loud_  is right, that brat has a pair of lungs on him."

Hughes laughed once before growing serious. "But seriously, why did you decide to suggest for Edward Elric to be made a State Alchemist? He's just a kid, I mean, he's what? Eleven? Twelve?"

"Almost thirteen." If memory served, Ed's birthday was in a few weeks, though he doubted the kid would stop his search for the Stone to celebrate something like that, not when his brother couldn't really appreciate his own. No one could say that Ed didn't put his brother before himself.

"I mean, military life isn't easy. That boy's gonna have to go through hell someday. You and I certainly have seen our share."

"He's already seen hell, and plenty of it." Roy didn't bother explaining what that meant to Hughes, though his friend did furrow his brow in confusion.

The car came to a stop and deposited both men sharply on the curb. "Sir, there's paperwork on your desk awaiting your signature," Hawkeye informed her superior, her sharp gaze making sweat begin to collect at the nape of Roy's neck.

"I'll get right on it," Roy promised, and she narrowed her eyes before driving off to park the car.

"Still slacking off?" Hughes teased. "You could be doing better things."

"Like what?" Roy immediately regretted it, because Hughes got a sparkle in his eye and faster than lightning whipped out a picture from inside his jacket, shoving it in Roy's face so much that he had to lean back and blink a few times.

"Look at my little Elicia! Only two months old!"

The picture displayed a baby with green eyes and fair brown hair in tufts, shaking a meaty fist at the camera. "Isn't she the  _cutest_ thing?"

If Roy had thought Hughes was bad in Ishval, gushing over the letters his then-girlfriend had been sending him, it was nothing compared to now.

"Yeah, yeah, your kid's cute—" Hughes gave a horrified gasp at Roy's flippant demeanor, but Roy ignored him in favor of pushing open the door.

Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda and Master Sergeant Kain Fuery gave him relatively cheerful greetings, while Warrant Officer Falman saluted stiffly (he was the newest recruit to Roy's team and the most uptight; they were working on it). Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc seemed to be in an almost stupor as he read through his ( _Roy's_ ) paperwork, but he gave a friendly nod, his cigarette slipping in his mouth, unlit per military regulation, but present for the first smoke break.

Hawkeye's desk was still vacated, but would be filled in moments, Roy was certain; Riza was a stubborn one and she had a tendency to stick to his side. He meant that in the fondest of tones.

He strode past them to open the door to his own office within the larger one, permitting Hughes to follow him through, shutting the door behind him.

It was then that he saw the large pile of paperwork on his desk to be signed and Roy visibly sagged.

"One of these days, I'm going to regret the fact that Lieutenant Hawkeye is so efficient," he decided.

"You could always marry her first," Hughes offered with a cheeky grin and Roy had heard that suggestion so many times that his face no longer flushed.

Roy opted to ignore him, settling behind his desk and moving the mountainous pile of papers to the side before pulling out a file from his lowest cabinet and pushing it across the desk to Hughes. "This is what we've got on the Chopper so far."

Hughes thumbed through the file with interest. "Not a lot to go on, I see."

Roy's eyebrow twitched. "He doesn't leave much behind. Even the coroner says there wasn't as much blood as you'd expect with the bodies sliced and diced, so the Chopper probably kills the victims somewhere else and just leaves them out in the open for us to find."

Roy was at a loss with this serial killer. He was very good at not getting caught, Roy would give him that, but everyone slipped up. Maybe he'd grab someone smarter than him and they'd get away, maybe he'd kill someone too important…either way he'd slip up, and they'd be there to catch him when he did.

Distantly he heard the sound of clanging metal and a soft voice speaking beyond his door. Alphonse Elric was easy to recognize on the combination of those two things alone, but usually his arrival was accompanied by the sound of the main door being thrown open by Ed, his loud voice announcing his presence immediately. Roy didn't think he'd ever seen the kid quiet since his certification as the Fullmetal Alchemist.

There was a sharp knock on the door and it opened to reveal Hawkeye. "Sir, Alphonse is here, he wants to know if you've seen Edward recently?"

Roy blinked. "I didn't even know Fullmetal was  _back_  from his assignment…kid owes me a report."

" _Oh,"_  came Al's dismayed voice and Roy could see the hulking suit of armor beyond. "Brother and I wanted to check out the library here in East City and see if there was anything that could help us…Brother said he needed some fresh air but when I went to check on him he'd disappeared."

Roy wondered how a suit of armor could pull off pleading eyes so well when they were just red balls of light, but Al did it marvelously.

"Maybe he went for a walk?"

"Brother wouldn't disappear without telling me," Al insisted and Roy had to give that to him. Al was the single person alive that Ed would never abandon. No matter what, Al was Ed's priority, and that had been obvious from day one.

"We'll keep an eye out," Roy acquiesced instead and the thankful tone that Al gave him in return when his phone suddenly rang.

"Yes?"

The phone operator spoke on the other end. "There's a call for you on the public line, sir."

"I'll take it," Roy said, to which there was a loud click. "Yes, who is this?"

" _Co-olonel Bastard."_

"Ah, Fullmetal." Roy allowed a faint smile at how Al's entire body whipped around at the mention of his brother. "You're late at getting me my report and—" There was a strange rattled on the other end, like something was shaking terribly.

" _There's -there's so much blood,"_  Ed's voice was hollow and frightened, not filled with bravado, like it usually was.

Roy sat up, his eyes sharpening. "What blood?" he demanded. "Where are you?"

"Is Brother all right?" Al's voice pitched high in concern and now Roy knew that he had the attention of everyone in the office, including Hughes who was frowning seriously at him.

" _I-I don't—"_ Ed's voice struggled and died, dredging up the image of a terrified Ishvalan child cowering before him in the Ishvalan War, crimson eyes wide, tears gathering before a shot sent her sprawling, blood collecting at the kill-shot at the center of the forehead. The image morphed and instead it was a small boy with golden hair and eyes, sun-touched and frightened.  _"—he took my arm, I—"_

" _Fullmetal!"_  Roy barked. "Get a hold of yourself!"

There was a sharp intake of breath on the other end, like the boy had subconscious snapped to attention. He'd done it once before - _just_  once- and Roy had poked fun at him for following military protocol for the first and perhaps the only time in his life, and then his ears were left ringing from Ed's screams of outrage.

" _Sir,"_  Ed managed to force out, probably because of how startled and off-balance he appeared to sound. Roy doubted he'd say it a second time.

"Tell me where you are."

There was silence on the other end and something like ice filtered through Roy's veins. It was his fault, he was the one that got the kid in the military in the first place—

But then his voice came again.  _"There's a sign across the street -says 7_ _th_ _street…there's a house right across from me that's painted yellow with five flowerpots on the porch…"_

Roy relayed the information to Master Sergeant Fuery who took off running.

" _Colonel—"_

"We're on our way, Fullmetal," was all Roy said.

* * *

Ed had a hand tightly clenched around Al's gauntlet, and he hadn't let go since he was tugged gently out of the house by Hawkeye, her military jacket around his shoulders, settling him just as gently on the edge of the street as a medic came to look him over.

He was a state of numbed shock. He didn't think he'd heard a word of what the medic had said to him, his blood still pulsing in his ears.

Ed had lost his trademark coat somewhere along the way. Or maybe he'd left it at the library…he couldn't remember. There were bandages over his arm where the butcher knife had left Ed bloody, even if they were just small nicks. Ed was lucky, and it was clear that he'd killed more.

_There had been so much blood._

"I was so scared," he whispered, eyes wide as he looked into Al's bright opticals. "I-I thought he was gonna  _kill me."_

Al, evidently, couldn't think of anything to say, simply winding an arm around his brother so Ed's face could brush gently against Al's chestplate, hoping Ed couldn't hear the wild laughter from the one Mustang and his friend had called the Chopper as he was shackled and sent off to jail.

Al couldn't feel most things, the things that really mattered, but he could feel how small Ed's shoulders were to him, he could feel how they shook.

It must've been exhausting for his brother to put up a tough front all the time. Al wanted to tell him he didn't have to, that this was the path he'd chosen  _too_ , that he didn't have to be his overprotective big brother all the time, but in the end, Al just kept his silence.

Mustang was frowning heavily at something the other man was saying, glancing briefly back towards where Ed was clinging to Al's armor. He held up a hand then, stalling the second man's words before saying something Al couldn't hear. It was only then that he finally approached the brothers.

He dropped a hand to Ed's shoulder and Ed stiffened briefly before prying open his eyes and Al didn't even know if his brother realized that he'd relaxed at the sight of the Colonel, whose touch appeared to ground him in reality.

Al was still small when their father left, it wasn't as much of a sore point for him as it was for Ed, but he wondered if Ed remembered what it was like to look up to a man like their father had once been.

"We're heading back to the office, kid, it's probably more comfortable there to talk."

Ed blinked a few times, like he had to remind himself where he was, that his arm was bandaged, that his other arm was gone, ripped out at the port, that there was a jacket that didn't belong to him wound around his shoulders.

"Can you walk?" There was a careful smile on Mustang's lips at that, like he knew what Ed's response would be, and he did.

Ed's teeth ground together and hot coals burned in his eyes as he glared at the Colonel. " _Yes,"_  he spat out, "I can fucking  _walk!"_

A few soldiers walking by stared at the blatant disrespect to a superior officer, but Roy just smirk as Ed shrugged off his hand on his shoulder.

He stumbled slightly as he stood, clutching at the visible port at his shoulder, but Ed only needed a moment to right himself.

"Where's my arm?" he demanded, all full of fire.

"Don't worry, Havoc's got it." Roy pointed the brothers in the direction of his car. "He says it looks be mostly intact."

Ed sighed, practically sagging in relief. "Good, Winry won't kill me now."

"Winry wouldn't kill you for that, Brother," Al reproached, but his voice was lighter now that Ed seemed to not be quite so shaken. "Every time you break your arm she gets more money!"

Ed's lips twitched and he patted the helmet on the top, like he was trying to ruffle his little brother's hair before Al straightened up to his full height, making the movement impossible.

"All right?" Roy asked just to be sure, resituating Hawkeye's jacket around his shoulders when it slipped.

Ed scowled at him. "M'fine," he muttered, striding ahead of Roy before calling back to him "You better not crash the car, Colonel! I know you're a bad driver!"

"What was that,  _you brat?"_

Honestly, that kid… he made Roy's life so hard by just  _breathing._

"Why couldn't your brother have your disposition?" Roy lamented to Al, who was easily the more manageable of the two.

There was a tittering sound within the armor and Roy was almost certain that it was giggling. It wasn't a sound he'd heard before. It was strange to think that the soul bound to that armor was actually a small boy.

But no one said the Elrics were normal in any sense.

* * *

Ed narrowed his eyes suspiciously, one hand keeping a tight grip on his removed arm as he sat on the couch in Mustang's office, with the man that the Colonel had introduced as Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes before shutting the door behind the pair. "Who're you, exactly?"

Hughes gave a light laugh. "I guess Roy hasn't talked about me much."

Ed arched an eyebrow. "I don't usually stick around the Colonel long, he annoys me."

"But he's the first person you called in a crisis."

Embarrassment flooded through Ed's face.  _"Shut up!"_

Hughes lifted his hands in surrender. "We're friends, actually, we're soulmates but its not something either of us bring up much."

Ed blinked in surprise, eyes flitting towards the simply mark on the man's neck. Some soulmates were platonic. He had to assume that was the case with Mustang and Hughes, given one of them was wearing a wedding ring and the other wasn't.

"I work with the Investigations Division in Central," Hughes continued, "I was sent here to catch a serial killer…lucky me you got to him first."

"Lucky _, yeah,_  that's me," Ed drawled out, rolling his eyes. "Why'd he go after me?"

Hughes smile faded into a serious expression. "Turns out he's got a type, blondes with long hair…maybe he just happened on you by chance. I don't think he was expecting a State Alchemist for a victim."

Something dark coiled inside Ed's stomach, a sickening revolt that that was what had appealed to The Chopper. His golden hair was falling out of the long braid and he lifted his hand from the automail arm to finger the locks uneasily.

"Why don't you tell me what happened?" Hughes asked gently.

So, Ed told him about leaving the library to get some fresh air, promising Al he'd be back in a few minutes. The street was deserted at that time during the day, maybe one car -a truck- had driven past, making an odd skidding sound. Ed had been tired -he hadn't gotten much sleep the previous night-, he hadn't been expecting it when something connected painfully with the back of his skull. Ed told him about waking up in a strange place with dried blood around him, without his arm. He didn't really remember how he'd gotten loose before the Chopper took a swing at him with his cleaver, he just remembered how it felt, the terror rushing through him. He only just managed to knock the man out before grabbing the phone and calling the first person he could think of.

Really, all things considered, Ed was faring remarkably well regarding physical injuries. He had a few nicks on his arm and the back of his head ached, but apart from that, Ed was  _fine._

"Is that all?" Ed asked finally, watching Hughes' pen still on the paper. "Can I go?"

"Got somewhere to be?" Hughes quirked an eyebrow.

Ed shrugged carelessly. "Al worries," he said as an explanation.

"You just escaped from a serial killer," Hughes pointed out nonplussed.

"Yeah?" The look in Ed's eye was clearly a challenge. "And?"

Blood ran thick between the brothers, it seemed.

"No, that's everything," he said. "You can go. Take care, Ed."

Ed gave a grunt before pulling himself up into a standing position, looping his automail arm over his shoulder that still had a limb attached to it before kicking the door open aggressively.

The office outside of Mustang's was surprisingly empty with only Breda and Havoc at their desks and Al patiently waiting to him.

"Brother! All done?"

Hughes gave a little wave to his soulmate's subordinates before disappearing as well, with Ed frowning after him. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with that information. He figured that if anyone would have been Mustang's soulmate -if he'd had one to start with, because,  _obviously_ not everyone had them- it would've been Hawkeye, they were practically attached at the hip.

Ed nodded distractedly, his braid falling over his shoulder. Now it felt like a noose that Ed needed to cut off. "I need some scissors."

Havoc was already riffling through his desk for a pair. "What for, Chief?"

"I'm gonna cut my hair."

That made everyone still in the room pause and stare at him. Breda was actually blinking in complete befuddlement.

" _Brother,"_  Al had never sounded so horrified, "you like your hair long…you _begged_  Mom to let you grow it out."

A bitter snarl of ' _And look what I did to her'_  was silenced before it could part from his lips; Ed didn't want Al to know just how much he hated himself for everything that had happened because of that failed human transmutation.

Havoc was the first one out of his seat, and gently prodded Ed until he took it, shifting uncomfortably in the chair. He couldn't bear to look at Al.

"Chief, you're always screaming at us when we suggest cutting your hair," Havoc pointed out with surprising patience. Both he and Breda were kneeling so that Ed's head was currently resting higher than theirs, a sharp contrast from how it usually was.

"Long blonde hair was the the Chopper's type," Breda muttered to Havoc, but Ed still heard it. "Listen, Ed, there's nothing wrong with your hair, okay? And there's  _nothing_  wrong with  _you."_

Ed blinked furiously, tugging on the end of his braid, screwing up his face so he didn't get emotional in front of the pair of them. "I feel… _gross."_  Bile threatened to rise up in his throat that the color and length of his hair was the reason a serial killer had looked at him and thought he'd be fun to dice up.

" _He's_  the one that's gross, you're just a kid that happens to like your hair long, there's nothing gross about that," Havoc said, ruffling Ed's hair slightly. Normally Ed would find it annoying, but this time he didn't.

They didn't _have_ to make him feel better, he was just like them, another subordinate of Colonel Roy Mustang, but everyone treated him and Al like they belonged there. It was one thing for Winry and Granny to treat them like that, they'd both known Ed and Al so long, but with Mustang's team it was different. Somewhere inside him, Ed could feel his chest grow warm.

"I don't think I could take you seriously with short hair," Breda added, completely straight-faced and Ed gave him a glare that had both him and Havoc grinning while Al's shoulder spikes seemed to relax behind them. "Might try to get an early night, big guy, you look exhausted."

Ed scowled some more, but even he couldn't deny how tired he was. It was getting late…it would be all right for him to crash in the dorms, right?

He yawned widely. "G'night," he said instead, standing swiftly enough to just miss something that sliced through the air next to his ear. Everyone looked around at the  _thunk_  to see something sharp and metallic imbedded deeply in wall behind all of them.

The four of them only had a chanced glance to the ceiling of a figure clothed in black, wearing a mask to hide their identity before there was a flash of light and the sound of one of the windows shattering.

"What the hell-?" Breda managed. "You guys all right?"

Al nodded his head needlessly but it was then that Havoc shouted for a medic and if Al had had a body, his face would've gone bloodless at the sight of his older brother on the ground, a wince creasing his brow, red blooming over his abdomen as Havoc ripped off his jacket to stanch the flow of blood.

" _No, Brother!"_

Ed's only attached arm twitched towards the sound of Al's voice, reaching for his brother before consciousness failed him and he faded into a dulling darkness.

* * *

They'd acted too soon. It could go either way at this point. Either the alchemist pulled through and they'd have to try again or the alchemist would die and they'd be able to relay the good news.

They should've waited until he was on his own. Without an arm he was vulnerable and thus wide open for an attack, and the alchemist was worth so much to them dead.

But if he lived…the Emperor would be  _most displeased._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone should've warned you guys about the kind of writer I am before the Edling sucked you in…trauma and cliffhangers are a definite must ;)
> 
> All of Mustang's team are dads, I swear, even Hawkeye's a dad to this angry spitfire and his lovely armored baby bro.


	3. Close Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've so many people screaming about this fic, so I must be doing something good! And I heard the lovely River, who I chuck all my ideas for this fic at, cried over the scene I wrote with Ed considering cutting his hair, so that's a definite plus!

The sight of the faint circle with the dot at the center when it had once been a thick black mark on his chest was enough to make Ling Yao lightheaded, a spike of terror running through his veins.

The soulmark on his chest had never lightened so much, not since he was eleven, that was the first time it had happened.

He made sure his chest was covered from the moment he awoke to see the mark nearly nonexistent, because he knew the Emperor had spies everywhere and he wouldn't ever give them the satisfaction of knowing that assassinating his soulmate would  _break_  him.

"I'm going to become Emperor," he decided after a spar with Lanfan, whose knives were very skilled in keeping Ling's dao away. "And I'm going to make sure no one has to be afraid of loving their soulmate."

Lanfan smiled. "Sounds like you'll be in need of an excellent bodyguard, then, young lord."

They both grinned, and though Ling's insides were still twisting themselves into knots over his unknown soulmate, the tension in his shoulders eased just slightly.

The Emperor would only realize too late that it was  _his_ actions that directly led to his downfall.

* * *

Roy never would've thought that his office would be roped off, but here they were.

His subordinates desks were a mess, pushed aside from when the emergency personnel had come to lift Ed's body onto a gurney, and take off in the ambulance for the hospital. There was a thick smear of blood on the floor, shattered glass by the window leaving a gaping hole. One simple straight blade was embedded in Falman's desk leg, but there was a second one, bloodied, lodged in the floor.

Ed was a small kid, and Roy knew enough about blood loss to know that it significantly impacted people more when they were smaller and younger, and Ed was certainly  _both._

He and Hawkeye had only just arrived in time to see the young alchemist carted off with his younger brother despairing. If Al could cry, Roy was certain he would've been doing that on  _top_  of hyperventilating.

Ed was not having a good day, that was for sure. First the Chopper, then an assassination attempt? Talk about bad luck. But assassinations were usually politically motivated and though Ed was becoming more well-known as the People's Alchemist, he'd only been a State Alchemist for nearly a year and hadn't met anyone of political importance to warrant an assassination.

Hell, the kid didn't hardly  _stick around_  in Eastern Command, he was almost constantly out in the field, scouring the country for any possible leads on the Philosopher Stone, often between missions he was required to perform for the military.

If anyone was a workaholic, it was  _definitely_  Edward Elric.

Roy frowned severely, looking down at the blood that had been spilled across the floor. He'd been so small and limp on the gurney.

If this was what it felt like to be a father, Roy was certain he didn't want to experience it; Fullmetal was giving him far too many heart attacks at twenty-seven.

At this rate he should give up now; he'd probably be  _dead_ by twenty-eight.

"Sir!" Falman saluted, still stiff enough with protocol that Roy nearly sighed. "Master Sergeant Fuery's checked the perimeter and the guards say they didn't see anyone."

Whoever it was, they must've been very skilled and very fast.

"Keep me updated," Roy said before dismissing him in time for Hawkeye to make several lengthy strides to reach his side. "What is it, Lieutenant?"

"Sergeant Han in Accounting threw me a bone when I showed him a picture of the weapon, sir," Hawkeye said, eyes sharp, "he thought it was possible it was from Xing."

Roy arched an eyebrow. "How does Han in  _Accounting_  know anything about weaponry?"

Hawkeye's smile was thin, wry, and barely there. He remembered the look on her face at the sight of Ed bloodied and unconscious. "Han's family immigrated from Xing…some political turmoil over the death of the clan heir, I believe…he said there's a weapon identical to the ones in there—" She nodded in the direction of the office. "—in his grandfather's room."

Xing. Now  _that_  was even more confusing. As far as Roy knew, Ed and Al had never ventured anywhere  _close_ to being out of the country. Besides, Amestris' relationship with Xing was practically nonexistent, but it also wasn't contentious. There was the Eastern Desert to get through before Xing could even be reached. The terrain was difficult, and it was a long journey to reach civilization on either side.

Now, Drachma or even Creta, Roy could  _definitely_  see them trying their hand at assassinations, after all, Amestris always seemed to be a hairpin away from war with either of them.

Even so, Ed had never been a part of any high-profile missions, though he'd been requested a lot by Generals above Roy. That in itself was a bit suspicious, because Ed was rather new to the military, with not even a year under his belt, and there were easily more experienced State Alchemists that could be sent out into the field. Thankfully, even though Roy was three ranks beneath them, he still had the option to deny them; Ed was his subordinate, not theirs, and he got the final say in where he was sent.

Ed was like the shining jewel of Eastern Command. He'd hate the description, but it was the most accurate. He was an alchemic genius, comprehending alchemical theories and formulas that Roy couldn't even begin to dissect, and though he didn't exactly like the military, he was very good at unconsciously turning public opinion towards them as a whole a bit more positively, by his actions alone, by helping people in ways that Ed probably didn't even think about. It made complete sense that generals would want him under their command.

(The first transfer request ended up on Roy's desk exactly three weeks after Ed had been certified and it ended up as a pile of ash)

Still, he couldn't see a slighted general killing the prize they wanted, that would be counterproductive.

Roy cupped his chin thoughtfully.

 _Xing_ …that had merit, he supposed. Ed and Al both spoke Xingese, he'd heard them converse easily in the language when they didn't want to be overheard. Roy's mother had been from Xing, and he'd learned her mother tongue at her knee, at least, until she and his father died in that car accident. He opted to tune out the brothers; their conversations tended to be intensely personal.

The brothers weren't Xingese -unless it was  _very_ far back in their family tree- their  _(Ed's_ ) coloring made it impossible. Roy was certain the Elrics were the only people in Amestris with golden eyes, so it was likely their father wasn't from Amestris, but neither brother spoke about their father, let alone their mother. Roy had to assume the interest in Xingese stemmed from the soulmark at Ed's throat, the symbol of the sun; rather fitting.

He got the feeling that the soulmark had something to do with the assassination attempt, but there weren't enough pieces to the puzzle for him to connect the dots yet.

"I think we should head to the hospital and see if Lieutenants Breda and Havoc saw anything," he said decisively, and Hawkeye's eyebrow twitched; he couldn't tell if it was because she thought his time might be better served completing paperwork, or if she could tell what his ulterior motive was.

"Yes, sir," she said simply, heading off to start the car.

* * *

Breda, Havoc, and Al all stood out like a sore thumb, well, technically  _Al_  was the one that stood out the most, he was a rather large suit of armor, after all, but the other people in the waiting room were giving them all a bit of a wide berth.

It might've had something to do with the fact that both Breda and Havoc had blood smeared on them, and while Al didn't (which Roy was privately  _very_ glad of, because he didn't think the eleven-year-old would handle well knowing his older brother's blood was caked into his armor, especially if he didn't pull through), there was a small quaking sound coming from his armor that easily told Roy that he was trembling.

Havoc and Breda both gave Roy a salute, grim-faced, but they didn't stand; it appeared like they were in the process of assuaging Al's fears, though it didn't seem to be taking very well.

"What happened?" Roy demanded of them and Havoc and Breda shared a glance, probably deciding who would be explaining everything.

Evidently, they'd decided on Havoc.

"The Chief got out of the interview with Lieutenant Colonel Hughes and he asked us for some scissors because he wanted to cut his hair—"

"He - _what?"_  Roy stared blankly at his subordinate. This was  _Fullmetal_  they were talking about…his hair was longer than Hawkeye's and people suggesting to him to cut it off usually caused him to explode  _immediately_ and  _violently._

"Don't worry, we talked him down," Breda waved him off. "We'd just convinced him to crash in the dorms when a dagger just hit the desk." He gritted his teeth together and Al bowed his head forward. "We were too busy looking up to realize the guy had thrown another one…next thing we know the Chief's on the floor bleeding out."

"You saw who it was?" Hawkeye asked in surprised.

Breda shook his head. "Not really. They were wearing black and some kind of decorative mask…you know, like people wear in plays…I guess nobody got him before he got away?"

Roy and Hawkeye shook their heads as one.

"Though its starting to look like they might've been from Xing," Roy said, his eyes flicking towards Al and the armor seemed to stiffen in surprise. "You kids know anyone from Xing?"

"No," Al said immediately. "I mean, we speak Xingese,  _yeah_ , but we don't know anyone from there…we just learned it because Brother was interested after finding out what his soulmark meant in their tongue."

"What's it mean?" Havoc was frowning.

"The sun."

Breda arched an eyebrow at that. Nothing had applied more to Edward Elric, with his golden eyes and hair, sun-dark skin, and fiery temper.

"Could his soulmate be the reason for the attack?"

"What're you talking about?" Al was completely confused.

"Is it possible that maybe Ed's soulmate is a very important person in Xing?" Roy explained it more completely and Al looked at the ground in silence before lifting his head up again.

"I…I guess that might be possible." He sounded young and uneasy. He was just a kid and the idea that his brother might've been hunted down for nothing more than who he shared a soulmark with must've been incredibly disquieting. Then his voice broke slightly. "Brother doesn't deserve this."

Roy wasn't sure what to do but he remembered the action Ed had done earlier that day. He reached over and patted the top of Al's head. "No, he doesn't, but your brother's tough, he'll pull through."

_Hopefully._

"But there was  _so much blood,"_  Al looked down at his gauntlets, the horror leeching into his voice.

Hawkeye took the lead then. She knelt down so that his head was positioned slightly above hers. "Alphonse," she said in a gentle voice that she tended to reserve for the brothers, "I know you're scared, and it's okay to be scared…there was a lot of blood, but they got him here as soon as possible and they're doing the best they can to fix him up…all right?" He didn't say anything or even more, so she stressed it again. " _All right?"_

There was a choked sound from within the armor. "Y-yes, Lieutenant." Roy remembered the picture of the two golden-haired brothers on the Rockbell's mantle and he could just imagine golden eyes identical to Ed's, filling with tears.

Roy was getting soft.

"Edward Elric?" echoed a loud voice and they all looked up as the person that Roy could only assume was the surgeon and he moved towards them when he saw their reaction to the name.

"How is he?" Al was still quaking in fear.

The surgeon appeared surprised by the youthful voice coming from such a looming suit of armor, but then he gave him a bemused smile. "He got lucky. The stabbing just missed his kidney and we've stitched him up. The most damage was from blood loss, so we've got him on a transfusion. We'll recheck his blood counts in a few hours to see if he needs more, but mostly we'll just be keeping an eye on him as he comes out of the anesthesia, doing neurological checks…but barring any complications, he  _should_ be in the clear."

There was a murmur of 'thank yous' and Roy thought that if Al had been standing, he would've crumpled to the ground.

"Can I-can I see him?" Al asked quickly.

The surgeon considered him. "In a few minutes someone can take you to the room, they're situating him now…I believe someone at the main desk was trying to call his next of kin—"

"Yes," Al said quickly, "I'm—"

"A woman named Izumi Curtis was the only one they could contact, I assume you're the younger brother?"

There was a rattling sound and if Al had a human body, Roy would've thought that the wind hat been knocked out of him, so Roy spoke for him.

"Yes," he said, "this is Alphonse Elric."

"I'd give them ten minutes," the surgeon informed Al kindly, though it was clear he was incredibly befuddled about the younger brother of an almost thirteen-year old boy being within a suit of armor that easily reached seven feet.

"Al?" Breda nudged the suit of armor only to jump when Al just pitched right to the side, collapsing in a heap of metal. Roy had never seen him do that before. "Hey,  _Al!"_

"T-T-Teacher's coming?" Al's terrified voice echoed. "She's gonna kill us when she finds out what we did!"

Roy's team had been hearing for months the terrors that Ed and Al endured for six months under their alchemy teacher Izumi Curtis, but he'd always thought they were gross exaggerations. Now he was starting to wonder.

"Well, I don't think she'll kill your brother…he's in the hospital," Hawkeye pointed out in what she clearly thought was a helpful tone, but the ominous silence from Al made it clear that he severely doubted that. And it certainly didn't put Al in the clear.

"And he's going to have twenty-four-hour guards posted."

Everyone turned to look at Roy, something that appeared to irritate him immensely. "Someone attempted to have a major and a State Alchemist killed within the confines of Eastern Command…I'd rather they not get close to a  _second_  chance."

His men saluted, and Al bobbed his head thankfully.

Roy hoped they weren't determined enough to try again, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

* * *

So, the boy had survived…that was truly  _unfortunate_ , but a hospital was far easier to infiltrate than a military command post, and with how he was still in intensive care…it would be easy to pass it off as the boy succumbing to his injuries.

And if worst came to worst, the assassin couldn't be blamed for making things a little messy, just as long as the job was done.

* * *

Roy could come up with an excuse. Hawkeye was just going to assume he was slacking on paperwork - _big surprise there_ \- but really, the idea of leaving the kid on his own seemed like a terrible idea, even more so now that he was still unconscious.

"It's all right, sir," Al said, his voice assuring. "I can keep an eye on Ed."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Alphonse, the only reason  _I'm_  here is because I'm avoiding paperwork…and Lieutenant Hawkeye." He bit back a shiver down his spine, imagining his right hand's sharp and unrelenting eyes if she found him there, not doing paperwork.

There was a stilted silence, then: "Of course, Colonel."

Roy got the distinct feeling that Al was only humoring him, but for the sake of his pride, he didn't bring it up.

He looked over to the youth slumbering in the hospital cot. Ed's hair had long since come free, hanging around his face like molten gold. His cheeks were a few shades too light for his complexion. But the thing Roy couldn't accept the most was the silence.

Fullmetal was generally the loudest person in the room, even more so if he and Roy were having a very furious argument. It was far too  _unnatural_ for him to be so quiet. The anesthesia had long since worn off, Ed should've woken up by now, but for some reason he hadn't.

The doctor had assured them that that kind of response wasn't outside the norm for someone who'd been stabbed and lost a lot of blood. He had lost a significant amount, but not enough that the blood loss would've damaged his brain ( _or so they hoped,_  and Roy really wanted them to be right).

"Is he feverish?" Al sounded apprehensive and it tugged at Roy's heartstrings to know that Al gone almost two years now without the ability to feel touch, the warmth of the sun, the coolness of rain as it fell from the heavens. Ed wasn't big on being touched in general either -there was a  _reason_  he wore those gloves on top of hiding his automail hand- but it must've been a hundred times worse for Al. No need to sleep, no need to eat, no ability to feel anything at all. It must be so  _hellish_  for Al to simply  _exist._

Roy pressed the back of his hand to Ed's brow, for Al's sake. "He's a little warm, but that's not unusual."

Al was quiet for a moment. "Mom started with a fever," he whispered.

That made Roy pause, drawing his hand back -Ed twitched in his sleep, mumbling incoherently- as he turned to look at Al, the red light that was his eyes dimming just slightly. Neither of the brothers spoke about either of their parents, like they were still suffering from the wounds inflicted by their mother's death and their father's abandonment. And they must've loved their mother more than words could  _convey_  to even attempt human transmutation.

"Your brother isn't going to die," Roy strengthened his voice. "They'd just send him right back, that's how annoying he is."

And Roy couldn't help but know on a deep and visceral level that Al was smiling at him.

"He likes you," he confided in the Colonel and the answering scoff made him laugh lightly. "I'm serious. He likes you, he trusts you, he's just  _really bad_  at voicing it..."

"I think you're reading too much into it." Roy patted Al's gauntlet almost like he was trying to console him. "Fullmetal's too much of a  _brat_ to like me."

"Whatever you say," Al replied cheerfully before stiffening suddenly and Roy heard it too; a sound like a pair of dulled thuds.

There were two guards outside the room.

Roy drew on his ignition gloves in a fluid movement and Al positioned himself over his slumbering brother's body just in time for the door to be thrown open, the sharp blades - _kunai_ , the term came to Roy- connected with his armored back and a dark blur tumbled into the room in a single second. Roy snapped his fingers, raising the density of the oxygen molecules around the unknown attacker.

He had to be careful with using flame alchemy in the hospital, though, because although there was oxygen everywhere, there was a higher concentration in hospitals due to it being needed for patients like Ed.

As a result, the explosion was rather  _small_  and the figure clothed in black bearing a mask that somewhat resembled a dragon was left standing, smoking and singed as he was, and,  _unfortunately_ , alive.

He was reaching for another blade and Roy was prepared to snap again when he heard the telltale crackle of alchemy being performed and he couldn't help but gape as a fist that appeared to have been made from the wall opposite the door shot forward with enough force to knock the assassin into the wall before the fist crackled once more with alchemy, drawing back through the opening of the door.

"Oh, _no,"_  Al said weakly.

And through the doorway stepped a woman, slender and tall, dark eyes, and hair in a gathering box braids, with the Flamel symbol tattooed onto her left breast, the very same symbol that Ed wore on his jacket and Al on his shoulder; it was more than an alchemic symbol, Roy realized belatedly, it was also a way of identifying the brothers as her pupils.

Her sandals clacked on the floor as she stepped through the opening to glower fiercely. Somehow her presence was more foreboding than the giant of man behind her, with a face full of bristly dark hair and arms large enough to put him in competition with Major Alex Louis Armstrong.

"Uh, Teacher—" Al was tittering as he stepped forward and she took his arm and flipped him with ease, sending the suit of armor spinning into the wall.

She paused, her eyes sharp and dark and Roy could just guess that she'd been able to tell that though the armor was heavy, it should've been  _much_ heavier with an eleven-year-old boy inside it. Then her eyes flicked over to where Ed was lying, still unconscious. His automail arm still remained unattached, but the port was visible at the neck of his gown, meeting with thick scar tissue, and the space where the limb once resided was empty and obvious.

At long last her eyes met his and Roy found himself startled to see the undisguised wrath burning within her dark eyes.

"You must be the  _idiot_ that thought recruiting my stupid pupils into the military before they even hit  _puberty_  was a good idea," she spat, lips curling in distaste. "My name is Izumi Curtis."

Now, more than ever, Roy was absolutely  _certain_  that the brothers hadn't been lying one single bit about their teacher. Roy was eternally grateful that he'd never been taught by someone as fearsome as her.

"And I'm going to make you wish you'd never  _met_ these boys," Izumi said, cracking her knuckles and Roy wished for the first time that he'd actually done as Hawkeye wanted and kept his head down and completed his paperwork.

_This wasn't going to be pretty._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the idea of Ed putting down the Curtis family in his next of kin with the hospital (apart from Al, obviously). Ed and Al have got so many parents in this fic its fucking ridiculous, I love it.
> 
> But at least you guys got to see a hint of Ling, right? His official introduction is still a ways off, but you'll get glimpses from time to time about him and the condition of Xing, but at least the plot is going places, right? ;)


	4. For the Emperor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was an insane amount of love for Izumi with the last chapter, which was great :) Poor Roy, he's got his work cut out for him.
> 
> Izumi tossing Al into the wall like he weighed nothing was probably the best part.

Roy thought maybe he should defend himself to the clear rage in Izumi's eyes -the last time he'd seen a look like that was when he'd unknowingly walked through an Ishvalan slum, Roy hadn't slept right for a  _week_  after- but he had never met this woman before. He had only heard tales of her told by the Elric brothers and she was somehow living up to  _all_ of them.

But there really wasn't a defense to provide. He was the one that had convinced Ed to go into the military in the first place, but he was beginning to think that Ed wasn't attacked because he was in the military.

"Uh, Teacher—"

"These boys," Izumi was seething, there was practically fire in her eyes, "are almost  _twelve_  and  _thirteen._  What gives you the  _right_ to induct them into the military? Are you so fond of child soldiers,  _Colonel Roy Mustang?"_

Roy wasn't sure where she'd gotten his name, but he  _definitely_  didn't like the disdainful emphasis she put on it.

He was still positioned so he was leaning slightly over Ed's body, one hand gloved and preparing to snap again, the other closed around Ed's small wrist, feeling the steady thrum of his pulse.

The large man behind her cracked his knuckles ominously and Roy realized that he'd been staring at her without actually speaking.

"I didn't induct them," Roy felt the need to correct, "I gave them the option."

"And you  _think—"_  Roy vaguely wondered if she could get away with murdering him - _probably-_  but everyone in the room was distracted by Ed stirring suddenly and she fell abruptly silent.

He was shifting in the bed, turning slightly towards Roy, his hair falling over his shoulder from the movement. His eyelids fluttered faintly, finally opening as Al pulled himself to peer over the bed.

" _Brother!"_  Al had never sounded so relieved. "How are you?"

Roy abruptly realized he was still holding onto Ed's wrist and tried to release it without drawing too much attention. It wasn't like he'd been trying to hold the kid's hand or anything,  _he was just checking his pulse, dammit!_

Gold eyes shifted from Roy to Al, furrowed confusion relaxing into relief. "What-" Ed's single croaked word dissolved in a cough that made him spasm in pain as it jarred his wound. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face tight with pain. Izumi smoothed her hand over his brow, stroking into his hair while Roy reached over to press the button that would pump some of the pain medication in through his IV.

It took a few moments for Ed to relax, leaning into Izumi's soothing touch with a sigh, his eyes still closed. Roy felt a pang of something that he didn't want to describe, so he opted to shove it down deep instead of facing it.

"Mom," he murmured, not completely awake and Izumi froze for a moment, the man stiffening behind her.

Roy knew enough to know that Ed and Al's mother was clearly dead, or they wouldn't have bothered with the human transmutation otherwise. He could only assume that the action was one that she must've performed, and the pain medication was addling his brain.

Izumi's shoulders seemed to tremble, her face flicker into something softer, something that ached with longing. "Get some rest, Edward," she said quietly, her fingers still rubbing into his hair. "We'll talk when you're rested."

He seemed to relax even further, sinking back into the pillows with a sigh.

"If you think the fact that one of my stupid pupils is injured and the other is a hollow suit of armor is going to stop me from kicking your ass, _I can assure you,_ you couldn't be more  _wrong,"_  she spoke quietly so as not to disturb Ed, but there was ice in her tone and the husband -Roy could only assume; they were both wearing silver rings- was glowering fiercely while Al pressed his gauntleted hands together nervously.

Roy blinked. "I was actually going to go and see to it that the assassin-wannabe was thrown in jail before he got another chance to kill Ed, to be honest."

There were a few flat stares turned towards the assassin whose mask had cracked from the force of Izumi's attack was starting to stir.

Al made a sound of alarm at the sight of a glittering blade, leaning to shield his brother once more and Roy already had his gun out when the assassin uttered a few words in Xingese before using it to slit his own throat.

Crimson bloomed under the crumpled body. An anticlimactic end, Roy thought, given the amount of effort he'd expended in attempting to personally murder the Fullmetal Alchemist. But he was already dead, might as well see if there was anything in his pockets to indicate any reason for the attack on Ed.

There was only one thing on his person that wasn't a weapon and it was a single picture of Ed, red coat over his shoulders, neck twisted slightly to look down the road, his long braid tumbling over one shoulder, but hardly doing much to hide the soulmark that had always been dark and obvious against the side of his throat, even more so than Hughes'.

"Al," he said as the blood continued to pool, "how often would you say that you and Ed are apart?"

"Um…" Al tilted his head slightly in thought. "Not  _that_  much. Why?"

"Do you know when this was?" Roy held out the picture and Al leaned in to look while Izumi and her husband frowned at the picture that had clearly been taken of Ed when he wasn't aware of it.

"No," Al admitted regretfully.

Roy looked back at it. He supposed it could've been taken in Central when Ed was first certified…but that was an oddly long time to be stalking a kid like Ed.

And Roy liked the words he'd uttered in Xingese even less:  _'For the Emperor'_

* * *

Ed came around slowly. He'd almost awoken earlier, or had just briefly, Ed wasn't sure which, but it was definitely one of the two. There's been a warmth of fingers against his wrist and another stroking into his hair. It had felt… _nice._  Like when he was four or five and he'd gotten so sick that both Mom and Hohenheim had stuck around to look after him. It was one of the only memories of Hohenheim that actually reminded Ed that their father had probably loved them once. It was a trusting warmth and he'd sunk into it, relaxing into sleep once more after just barely catching sight of Al's glowing eyes and a bluish blur that Ed was sure couldn't have been Mustang.

Al's voice was getting clearer and clearer, echoing in his ears now. "I'm sorry, Teacher."

"Sorry isn't an excuse, Alphonse," Teacher's sharp reply came.

"I know, but we knew that it was taboo and we still did it anyways…" Al's voice struggled and faded. "We just missed Mom so  _much."_

Ed was so close to being awake, but what tugged at his heartstrings the most was the pain in Al's voice and how he talked about Mom.

"I know." The pain in Teacher's voice was too deep, too visceral to come from anything but experience.

Ed's finger twitched, and he heard a low rumbling. "I think he's finally coming around."

Everything felt so heavy and her was a dulled throbbing at Ed's abdomen that all Ed wanted to do was sink back into sleep once more, but he couldn't actually feign sleep away; he'd done that once with Teacher and it hadn't ended well.

So, Ed tiredly opened his eyes, blinking hazily a few times as he took in the sight of Al at his right, the red lights that were his eyes almost seemed bright with concern -and Ed had gotten rather good at reading Al's emotions despite not being able to see any change in expression on the armor- and to his left were two very familiar figures; Teacher and Sig.

"Teacher," he rasped, his throat feeling like sandpaper.

Her eyes sharpened. "Hello, stupid pupil. I see you've become one of the military's dogs."

Ed winced hard. He'd always known that she was going to find out about it eventually, but somehow having this conversation while he was laid up in a hospital bed -because there was no mistaking the lightly painted walls and the overly clean smell that often accompanied his stays in the hospital- didn't ever really factor in.

His abdomen protested, and Ed lifted the blanket with his only arm to see a thick bandage over where his pain was coming from. Ed frowned before looking to Al. "What happened?"

"Um…you -you don't remember?" Al sounded a little nervous. "We were in the Colonel's office with Lieutenant Breda and Havoc…trying to convince you not to cut your hair."

Ed shifted uncomfortably as Teacher and Sig shared a look of surprise. "I remember that…Breda suggested I get some sleep, then…" His brow furrowed. "It's kinda a blur."

"You were stabbed, apparently someone was trying very hard to kill you." Teacher was scowling but for once Ed didn't think it was entirely his fault. "Piss off anyone in Xing?"

"Don't know anyone in Xing." Ed's hand came up to reflexively rub over the soulmark against his neck. He didn't need a mirror to know exactly where the mark was, smoothing his thumb over the perfect circle. "Did they catch him?"

"Um, well, sorta?"

Ed looked at his brother in complete confusion. "What's that even mean, Al?"

"Well…" Al pressed his fingers together. "He…kinda tried again while you were out of it…the Colonel and Teacher got him, but, he, um, killed himself."

There were a lot of things in that sentence that Ed could've focused on, but only one of them left him completely and utterly befuddled. "The Colonel Bastard? He was here?"

Teacher snorted at the insult. "I hope you call him that all the time."

"He does," Al said in dismay and both Teacher and Sig laughed, but Ed was still trying to wrap his head around the idea that Mustang had actually been by his side. Of course, that blur of blue could've only been someone in military uniform, but Ed had assumed that it had been someone else on the team, like Hawkeye or Havoc or Breda. Mustang had a lot of work to do -not that he ever did,  _the slacker_ -, he didn't have time to be worrying about injured subordinates.

"He was probably just avoiding paperwork," Ed decided with finality.

Al gave a tittering sort of giggle from within the armor. "I don't think so. Colonel Mustang was really worried, they all were."

Al always saw the best in everyone, even Mustang, so all Ed could do was pat his head in what he hoped was a comforting manner while not believing him for a second.

"Brother…" Ed looked over to Al. "Do you think your soulmate could be someone important over in Xing?"

That made Ed pause and stare at Al in complete incomprehension. "What're you talking about, Al?"

"Its just…before he died, the assassin said 'for the Emperor' in Xingese…like he'd been personally ordered by the Emperor to kill you."

Ed's heart fell into his stomach and then he exploded angrily. "I've never even  _been_  to Xing! What a complete  _asshole!_   _I_  don't go around killing people I don't even know!  _Fuck Xing_   _and fuck its Emperor!"_

" _Ed!"_  Al was completely scandalized and trying to placate his brother at the same time but neither seemed to be working very well, especially with the Curtises laughing so hard. "You can't just _say_ that!"

"So I should just wait to be assassinated then?!"

" _Calm down!_  You'll open your stitches!"

Ed held his tongue and swallowed his rage, but just for Al,  _only_  for Al.

Teacher scooted her chair forward just slightly, but the sound it made echoed in the silence of the room and Ed's eyes shifted to her automatically. "Now," she said severely, her smile long-faded, "we're going to have a talk."

He got the feeling where the talk was going and he knew he wasn't going to like it, but Ed was looking at Teacher like he was seeing through her, remembering when they were younger, sparring against Teacher and failing to best her every time -Al always got farther than Ed ever could, he had always won when the pair sparred, even back when he'd still  _had_  his body- remembering how she'd simply clap her hands together and transmute.

"When I heard there was a young gifted State Alchemist who could transmute without a matrix…I knew what'd happened." Teacher's face darkened. "I didn't want it to be you, either of you, but I couldn't think of anyone else as  _foolish_  or as _desperate_ -and don't deny it!" She snapped and both Ed and Al recoiled sharply. "Look at both of you! Al is hollow -and I don't even know  _how_  you managed that – and you're missing two limbs!"

"I traded my arm for Al's soul." Ed's mouth had thinned into a line. He had no idea just how much he looked like his mother when she was displeased.

There had never been a successful binding of a soul to an inanimate object before. Ed had read enough academic alchemical papers to know that soul alchemy was a theory that had never been proven, and Ed would never admit to having empirical evidence that it actually worked; he'd never subject Al to that.

Besides, Ed was already the youngest State Alchemist who could talk circles around most of the alchemists he'd met -Mustang, at least, had some ability to comprehend some of the alchemy he talked about, putting him just above those other alchemists- he didn't need the satisfaction or the ego boost of knowing that he'd proven the theory correct. The only thing Ed cared about was ensuring Al got his body back.

"You—" Teacher bowed her head, hiding her face behind her hand. She couldn't seem to get the words out.

"But don't worry," Al said quickly, waving his hands emphatically, "we're gonna fix it! We're gonna find a way to get our bodies back, it's fine! I've just started making a list of all the foods I'm gonna eat when I get my body back, and—"

But Teacher surprised them. She stood up and tugged at Al's shoulder, cupping at the back of Ed's head, drawing them both into a hug, Sig's arms bracketing around them. Ed's chest felt warm and tight; when was the last time he felt like this? "You little idiots…it's okay to cry."

Al's gauntlet tightened at her back. "We're so sorry, Teacher," he murmured, wishing he had a body that would let him cry, and Ed, poor Ed who hadn't shed a tear since his automail surgery when he'd voiced his fears to Granny and Winry that Al would hate him for what he'd done -locking his little brother into a metal prison and throwing away the key,  _what monster would do that?_ -, Ed who had put on a tough front for Al and the military, Ed sobbed into her shoulder for everything he was worth. His flesh hand grasped at her side, fisting into the fabric there. He could've been holding his mother _, embracing his mother_ , and he wouldn't have known the difference.

And she let him bawl his heart out into her shoulder, her fingers rubbing into his hair soothingly, easing the knot in the pit of his stomach at the memory of the Chopper's fingers running through it, curling the locks over his fingers like it was something priceless or precious, like it was liquid gold. The need to cut it off at the base of his skull or rip it out of his head lessened, even more than when Breda and Havoc had patiently talked him down.

He didn't know how long they'd remained like that, all four of them in a huge bear hug…it seemed like hours before they parted with Ed quickly scrubbing at his eyes while Teacher rubbed her fingers through his hair, a sad sigh leaving her.

"It seems both of us are beyond help," she said softly.

Ed looked up, his eyes red, a question in his eyes.

The pain in Teacher's eyes was from an old wound that refused to heal; Ed knew the feeling. "For awhile it seemed we were barren, we wanted a child but couldn't conceive."

Ed and Al both started in surprise.

"When we were finally able to conceive, I ended up falling gravely ill." The pain in her voice echoed and Sig looked away, perhaps relieving the pain of that day as well. "It led to complications and…" Teacher had to pause and take a breath. "Our child was stillborn…I wanted to bring him back, so I committed the taboo. As a result, I lost parts of my inner organs. What an idiot I was…now I realize I should've told you sooner."

She met their eyes steadily and the mother that could've been that was still in mourning faded into the harsh teacher with a kind heart. "I could've spared you so much pain."

Ed's eyes felt hot and the urge to cry again welled up inside him. "Teacher?"

"Hm?"

"I'm sorry about your son."

Teacher's eyes widened and then softened again. "And I'm sorry about your mother." She wiped away a stray tear that Ed had missed. "Now, I want to say that I'll expel you for this, for committing the taboo, for being  _reckless_ and  _foolish_ , for becoming a State Alchemist." Ed's wince had grown steadily more pronounced as she continued and Al let out a low hiss to indicate how uncomfortable he was as well. "But the truth is…the Truth…" Teacher rolled her eyes faintly. "We are on even footing now, we've all made the same mistake…being able to transmute without a matrix requires such a price."

"Um," Al said suddenly, "I need a matrix to transmute."

That made Teacher pause in startled surprise. "You  _do?_  You mean, you didn't see the Truth?"

A shiver went down Ed's spine at the mere memory of it, that faceless almost formless being with a sickeningly wide smile as it took Ed's leg and took Ed's arm when he ventured back into its domain a second time, this time on purpose.

_(I am called by many names. I am the World, I am the Universe, I am God, I am Truth. I am All, I am One, and I am also You. You have dared to knock on the door, now the door is open)_

"No," Al agreed, "I don't really know what that means."

"You must've lost your memory from the shock." Teacher cupped her chin thoughtfully. "You must've seen more of the Truth than either of us."

"Do you think If I remembered what happened then it might help us figure our how to get our bodies back?" The eagerness in Al's voice made Ed smile tiredly.

"It's a possibility, a very slim one, though, and I wouldn't even know how to go about doing it." Teacher frowned. "In the meantime, I'd focus on something a bit more… _tangible."_

But there was a spark inside Al now, that there was a possibility that he actually knew a way to get their bodies back, hidden somewhere deep in his subconscious, and Ed wouldn't dare take that away from him.

* * *

"With any luck he'll still be asleep, and I won't have to deal with his smart mouth."

" _Aw_ , you like the little brat, admit it!" Hughes grin was far too cheeky, and Roy didn't care for it as he pulled off his gloves and tucked them into his pockets. "It's been a day, Roy, he's probably awake."

" _Unfortunately."_  Roy was already lamenting to the lack of silence he knew he'd be subjected to, or, at least that was what he told himself.

He stopped outside Ed's room, his hand closing around the handle when he heard the sound of laughter, laughter from multiple sources. But it was a good sign.

Roy pushed the door open and took in the scene before him. Al, Breda, Havoc, -Hawkeye, Falman, and Fuery were still in the office but sent their regards- and Izumi Curtis' husband were all seated in the plastic chairs clustered around the bed, while Izumi herself was seated on the bed, sitting so that Ed was directly in front of her as she ran the brush through his hair -had it really always been so  _long?-_  before parting the golden hair into three sections and beginning to braid them together.

It felt like Roy had walked in on some intimate family time and he wasn't sure how he felt about that.

Ed looked tired and pale -there was still a blood transfusion hooked up to his IV- but in far better spirits than he had been the previous day, and far more conscious, he was even smiling as Havoc and Breda made elaborate gestures to go along with the story they were telling about when they'd gotten into a spot of trouble back in their days at the Academy.

Havoc lifted a single hand and grinned over at Mustang and Hughes. The only thing missing was a cigarette dangling between his lips, but that was undoubtedly the best way to get him banned from the hospital in two seconds flat. "Yo."

Mustang strode forward, and Ed's golden eyes fixed on him in muted surprise. "Ah, Fullmetal, I'm surprised to see you awake…I hear wounds like yours can be seriously debilitating for someone of your size."

Ed's eyebrow twitched dangerously, and Mustang grinned widely. "Someone of  _my size?"_  Ed just barely managed to force out from behind his teeth.

" _Oh, no,"_  Al sounded horrified, like he was watching a train wreck happen in the moment and having no way to prevent it.

"Well, you do have a tendency to be on the _small_  side—"

Ed leaned forward, but his hand dropped suddenly to his bandaged abdomen with a wince, so Roy knew he'd jarred the wound. Izumi grasped his shoulder, forcing him to relax back against her, but then he lifted the hand to jab in Roy's direction.

"C'mere fucker and say that to my  _face!"_

"That would be a bit redundant, seeing as I've already done that."

Ed actually growled out loud. "If Al wasn't so worried about me busting my stitches, I'd bust your face!" he swore.

"Can you actually reach that high?" Roy's grin was demonic.

The noise Ed made sounded painfully like his enraged screams, only this one was a bit cut off, so he wouldn't irritate his wound again. "You've sunk low enough for me to  _reach, asshole!"_

It only devolved from there, leaving the entirety of the room watching Ed and Roy verbally harass each other back and forth, and though Roy was privately relieved Ed was doing better, an unease sank into his stomach at the thought of why someone would think assassinating an almost thirteen-year-old State Alchemist was a good idea.

But maybe they'd never find out the reason why, which Roy wasn't sure was better.

* * *

When Ling awoke the next day to find his mark almost back to its usual color, he relaxed in relief.

Ling looked down at the mark. "You're going to cause me a lot of trouble, aren't you?" he murmured to himself, pressing a hand over the mark and knowing viscerally that his soulmate was the reckless type.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Izumi a lot and I hope I did her justice in this chapter. She and Roy don't get along but imagining them trying to co-parent the Elrics gives me so much life.


	5. A Comforting Presence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone loved Izumi! That's good, her interactions with the Elrics give me life and you'll see more of it in this fic :)

There'd been a lot of people going in and out of Ed's room all day, it was  _exhausting._  Teacher, at least, had decided he was well enough that he wasn't in need of her mothering. She'd brushed her knuckles against the top of Ed's head and knocked Al's chest plate affectionately before bidding them farewell. Sig ruffled the tops of Ed and Al's heads, even though one of them was a suit of armor. It was... _nice._

"If I don't hear from you in six months, I'm coming back here and physically dragging you to Dublith, all right?" Her expression darkened. " _All right?"_

"Y-yes, ma'am!" Ed and Al just managed to stutter out, making her grin in an almost feral manner. Teacher was just  _too scary._

She cast them one last glance before leaving out the door.  _One down, one to go._

"How'd Winry take it?" Ed was wincing.

Their automail mechanic best friend was violent at best and psychotic at worst regarding her reacting to Ed damaging her automail in any way.

"Well, she wasn't happy, but she calmed down when I told her you were in the hospital…she sounded worried, but I told her you were gonna be fine." Al sounded far too cheerful. Ed bet it was because he could get into _significantly_  less trouble stuck in a hospital bed than out of it.

Ed scoffed loudly. "Yeah  _right_ , more likely she's worried about how much she's gonna have to repair herself and then charge me  _double_  for it."

Al giggled inside the armor. "She said she'll be here this afternoon."

"Great," Ed drawled out.

"She said 'maybe there's a cute city girl with a figure eight soulmark'."

" _Great_ ," Ed said in a horrified tone. "That's just what everyone needs, Winry with her wrench all  _sappy_ over some girl." That was a nightmare waiting to happen…unless the girl made Winry soft, which might improve her attitude. Ed was hoping for the latter.

Al full-on laughed. "I think it's sweet," he said wistfully and Ed paused, regret settling in his heart like a cold lump of lead. "That you're bound to someone, someone that'll make your life so much brighter by being a part of it."

Ed looked away, blinking a few times. It was hard for Al, he knew. His soulmark didn't exist without his body. Ed couldn't imagine what that must be like, his was an ever-constant, he never had a day where he didn't see his reflected in the mirror. The terrible irony was that the soul array inside Al's armor was almost exactly where his soulmark had been on his body. Ed had decided long ago to  _never_ bring that up.

"You're the romantic, not me," Ed said instead. Ed didn't spend a lot of time thinking about his soulmate, he probably should've, but his soulmate was always going to come in second to getting Al's body back.

"Brother?"

Ed hummed to let Al know he was listening.

"Do you think the soulmark is still there?"

Ed started and winced, dropping a hand to his aching and throbbing abdomen from the sudden movement. "What? Of  _course_ , it is!"

But the reality was, he wasn't even sure, neither of them were sure. Maybe something terrible had happened to Al's soulmate in the meantime, but a little white lie never hurt anyone. Besides, Al didn't need the harsh truth, not now, and Ed wanted his words to be true, more than  _anything_ , because if anyone deserved a happy ending, it was Al.

Ed rubbed at his shoulder port, the scars feeling tender and the shoulder beginning to ache as he looked out of the window, watching the rain as it came down.

"Brother?" Al's voice echoed within the armor. "Are you all right? You're kinda…quiet."

"Just old wounds, don't worry about it." Different types of old wounds.

Ed remembered the warmth of Mustang's hand encircling his wrist like he remembered Hohenheim's fingers brushing across his flaming brow when he was ill and Ed wasn't sure how he felt about that comparison.

"Sounds like I'm gonna be in here for a little while," he said to get Al's mind off it.

"Only until you're better." Somehow Al pulled off the best reproachful expression despite having none.

Dismay colored Ed's face as he turned his pleading eyes on his brother. "Come on, Al! You _know_  I hate hospitals!"

"Either that or you end up bleeding over the Colonel's carpet ("Blood's _festive_ ," Ed muttered under his breath, "gives his office a splash of color.") and then you'll be back in the hospital within the hour."

Ed narrowed his eyes…that phrasing wasn't quite Al, more likely he'd heard it and was repeating it. "You're conspiring against me!" he realized in outrage. "That  _bastard!_  Turning my own _brother_ against me!"

Al sighed in exasperation. "Ed, Colonel Mustang's not the enemy!"

Ed snorted in disdain but didn't believe him.

They sat in silence for a brief few minutes and then Al cautiously broke the silence. "Um, Brother?"

Ed hummed tiredly. All he seemed to want to do since they'd lost their bodies was eat and sleep, but being in the hospital and the attack on him seemed to have made it worse.

"I was thinking about looking into other branches of alchemy."

That had Ed frowning in consideration. "Other branches? You mean like healing or elemental alchemy?"

"Well,  _kinda,"_  Al acquiesced, "but I'm kinda interested in the alchemy practices in Xing…seeing if anything about it might help us."

Ed considered that thoughtfully. That idea had merit. All their research had focused on Amestrian alchemy, but maybe the path to their bodies could be found in foreign alchemy…maybe Xing had some information about the Philosopher's Stone that Ed and Al had missed.

"Sounds like a good idea," he said. "Bring me back some good books, will you?"

"Of course!" Al promised before darting off with a quick wave, leaving Ed on his own.

Without Al around, Ed could feel his body unwillingly relaxing, dragging his eyelids down. He has hovering somewhere between semi-consciousness and unconsciousness when he heard something that sounded like the door creaking open and then shutting as a weight settled in the chair next to his bed. Ed could just barely feel the flutter of fingers brushing his bangs aside.

But it could've just been Ed's imagination.

He settled into a dreamless sleep and when he awoke it was with a pained gasp on his lips.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Mustang's face swam before his eyes, before Ed winced them shut, feeling the urge to vomit as his fingers dug into the edge of his shoulder port.

Then Mustang was gone and Ed felt suddenly and viscerally  _alone_ , but it was a few moments later when something warm was placed on his leg port and then over his shoulder. Ed wasn't sure if the sob of relief catching in his throat actually made it out, but at this point he didn't even care. Fingers were rubbing soothingly into his hair at the nape of his neck, like Teacher had done, but the touch was rougher, less practiced in the movement, more familiar with the sharp snap than anything else.

Ed sank into it more than he'd like to admit. There was a word springing from his lips that had the movement still briefly before continuing on.

"Get some sleep, Ed," came a quiet voice.

Ed couldn't remember the last time Mustang had used his nickname, because he'd opted to stick to Fullmetal for as long as he'd had the name…maybe he thought it was the best way to set them apart, to keep each other at arm's distance. It made Ed wonder why he'd forgone it now.

After that he fell into a doze, fading in and out of consciousness, thinking he heard the sound of Hawkeye's annoyed voice talking about paperwork before the darkness closed in completely.

" _Such a pretty boy with pretty hair~!"_

There'd been fingers running through his hair, tugging just slightly enough for Ed to try to twist away, and that had only made him laugh. Ed's throat had felt paralyzed, he couldn't even  _scream_. It was like being strapped to a table like a lab rat that was going to be cut open, its organs exposed to see how it worked…Ed didn't even remember how'd gotten free, but it had been just in time for him to dodge the meat cleaver.

" _I'm gonna get you~!"_

Ed's eyes flashed open and he breathed in sharply through his nose. There was a scream lodged in his throat like it had been two days ago, only fading when he realized where he was.

Ed lifted his hand and pressed it firmly over his eyes, biting his lip hard.

"All right, Ed?"

Mustang's voice was steady and calm and that more than anything calmed Ed's racing heart. "M'fine," he managed to force out. "Just a nightmare." A shameful flush spread across his face. Admitting that to his superior felt like admitting a weakness. Ed dropped his hand from his face, rubbing at his eyes before blinking around him slightly.

Al still hadn't returned and being in the hospital screwed with Ed's ability to tell time, so Ed had no idea how long he'd been asleep (or in and out of sleep, as it were). He tugged on the end of his braid a few times before remembering that the Chopper had done that too.

"You look upset."

Anger boiled inside Ed and he snapped his eyes up to glare at Mustang. "Fuck  _you_ , Bastard Colonel!" he snarled out. "I'm  _perfectly—!"_

"Edward Elric." The sharp way he'd said his name made Ed flinch back and he looked away from Mustang quickly, hunching his shoulders slightly. "You were just kidnapped and almost  _murdered_ , and then after you gave a statement, you were almost murdered  _again_ …a lot of people would find that very upsetting and I wouldn't blame them, so why do you think I'd blame you?"

Ed cast a cautious eye back towards Mustang. He was looking him straight in the eye, unflinching and steady. Keeping his eye was hard. It was like looking Hohenheim in the eye, but Hohenheim always had less feeling than Mustang, Mustang was like a blazing fire threatening to burst at the seams.

He looked away. "I can't afford to be upset," he muttered.

"Why not?"

Ed's fist clenched tight in his sheet. "Because Al—" His words caught at the thought of his brother and Ed pressed his hand against his face again.

"I think Al knows you're not as tough as you claim to be," Mustang rolled his eyes at Ed, even though he didn't see it. "Seeing as all he needs to do is turn the puppy dog eyes on and you flake…which is pretty impressive since he doesn't even have _eyes_  in the first place."

Ed's lips twitched faintly at that. Like Mustang hadn't fallen for that trick all the time, either.

"All I'm saying is that its  _okay_  to get upset, especially about something like what you experienced…it's a  _normal_ response."

He dropped his hand slowly from his face to look at Mustang again, his expression open and honest. To be honest, Ed kinda hated him for it. His fatherly parental figures had always been rather on the low side but somehow Mustang was leaving them all in the dust and it wasn't fucking  _fair._  Ed didn't even  _like_ Mustang! (Or so he'd been trying to convince himself, but that didn't seem to be working out the way Ed wanted it to)

"He touched my hair with his creepy serial killer hands." Ed scowled, wrinkling his nose. "A lot of people touch my hair without asking…it makes me uncomfortable and the Chopper makes me feel  _gross."_

"That was why Havoc and Breda were saying you wanted to cut your hair," Roy surmised. He probably could've gotten a more in-depth reason as to why Ed had wanted to from his Lieutenants, but it was easier to just get it from Ed, well, not easier, per se, but it was probably  _better._

Ed brushed his bangs back away from his face with one hand.

"Who else has been touching your hair?" Roy asked flummoxed. Ed might've liked his hair long and he was still considered a child, but that didn't give anyone the license to touch it.

"Some of the soldiers." Ed shrugged his shoulders. "The guy that pulled on my braid broke his hand."

If Ed had looked to Mustang, he would've seen Roy hiding a smile behind his hand, just a hint of pride there.

Ed shivered suddenly and had to blink when Mustang's uniform jacket settled around his shoulders. Mustang arched an eyebrow, now only dressed in the light blue shirt he wore beneath it, daring him to argue, but Ed sank into the overcoat, small in comparison, not that he'd  _ever_ admit that.

"Colonel…can I ask you something?" Ed was tugging lightly on one of the sleeves, the ends just slightly frayed from use.

Mustang made a gesture with his hand and Ed continued. "You've never…you've never held it against us, what we did. Why not?"

Mustang blinked in surprise. "I thought it was fairly obvious."

Ed could feel irritation welling up inside him. He swore to Truth  _itself—!_

"I never needed to, you did all that work for me."

The fire burning inside Ed flickered and died. Mustang reached out and straightened his jacket around his subordinate's shoulders.

"What you and your brother did…I can't pretend I understand it, but I  _do_  understand that you loved your mother very much." Mustang remembered Al, just barely having his soul bound to the armor apologizing over and over and saying  _"We just wanted to see Mom smile again."_

Ed gritted his teeth together and looked away, blinking furiously.

"And it was rather clear that the one person who hates you for what you did the most…is  _you."_  Ed hated the patience and understanding in his tone, just as much as he craved it. "I do know that you're not alone in the blame, though, it wasn't just your mistake, it was Al's too…you like to forget that."

Ed twisted to look at him, fiery and enraged at the idea of someone putting the blame on Al for anything. It was Ed's fault,  _all_ Ed's fault!  _He_  was the one who dragged Al into this! _He_  was the one—!

But all he did was ground his hand into his eyes. "Al deserves better than me," were the traitorous pain-filled words that escaped from him.

"Maybe, maybe not, but you're what he's got and he loves you regardless."

Ed knew his eyes were red when he removed his hand to look at Mustang and any other day he would've cared about Mustang seeing him like that, but not today.

"You're a  _bastard,"_  Ed said decisively.

"Yes, I do get that a lot from you."

Ed's mouth twitched.

"So…your alchemy teacher was… _something."_  Mustang cleared his throat awkwardly, leaning back in the chair and Ed snorted.

"She beat you up, didn't she?"

"I'm sure it was on her list, but she seemed a bit more preoccupied with the pair of you." The relief that was clear on his face made Ed want to full-on laugh, but Ed knew enough about Teacher to know the relief was well-founded. "I would've thought you two would ask her about the Philosopher's Stone."

Ed started in surprise and his abdomen barely twinged, but it was only then that Ed really seemed to notice the bulge under his sheets. He lifted the sheet to see the heat pad at the junction where his leg port met his thigh and he could feel another over his shoulder, easing the phantom pains.

It was almost nice of Mustang to get that, though Ed would never ever admit that out loud.

"We did," Ed said finally, dropping the sheet and scowling fiercely, like he always did when people talked about his father. "She wasn't very interested in the Stone, but there'd been an Alchemist from Central that knew a lot about the Stone, Van Hohenheim."

"And you think if you find him—"

"I don't  _ever_ want to see him," Ed snarled, his hand tightening into a fist. "Not after what he did  _to us, to Mom—"_  He could still remember his mother's smiling face, coming up with all these excuses as to where Dad was. Ed hated him with a fiery passion.

"Van Hohenheim is your father," Mustang realized, and Ed glared at him. Mustang held up his hands in surrender. "Biologically, at least…so he left your mother and you boys?"

"Guess he had better things to do."

Ed parents had never been married. There was never a ring on Mom's finger. Hohenheim didn't even have a soulmark to match Mom's.

"How does Al feel about him?"

Ed gave a half sort of shrug. "I don't like talking about him, so Al doesn't bring him up."

Mustang gave a soft humming sound before reaching down and pulling out a thin sheet of paper, wafting it in Ed's face until he glared and took it from him. "What's this?"

"You're on medical leave for the week after you're discharged, no field work."

Outrage colored Ed's face. "What?  _No!_  I  _can't!_  I've gotta be out there and—!"

"Fullmetal, you're recovering from a  _serious_  injury. You might be out of the hospital in a few days, but you aren't leaving the _city_  until I get a note from your doctor." Mustang was firm and unshakeable and if Ed had another arm he would've crossed them and pouted, as it was the pout was unimpressive, if a bit amusing.

"So, I'm on desk duty."

"Yup, you'll most likely just be helping around with paperwork," Mustang said downright cheerfully.

Ed cottoned on very quickly. "More like you're trying to get out of your  _own_  paperwork, you  _slacker!"_

Mustang grinned, standing and taking a few files and tucking them into his folder -had he  _actually_ been doing paperwork? Would wonders never  _cease!-_  before bringing his coat up around him, giving Ed an amused smirk. "I'm sure we can find something for you…and that military uniform you never wear is  _mandatory_ , Fullmetal…it took effort to find one  _small_  enough to fit you."

Ed saw red. "You get back here,  _you bastard_  and I'll  _show_  you who's the smaller one!"

Mustang only gave an answering laugh, sliding the door shut behind him, leaving Ed fuming as he flopped back against the bed, Mustang's jacket still wound around his shoulders, and he didn't realize it until much later, when he convinced himself that it was just because the jacket was warm and not because of the man that gave it to him.

* * *

"Sorry it took so long, Brother!"

Al was in much better spirits now that Ed was in recovery, but Ed liked it better when his little brother was cheerful, it made him feel lighter somehow.

The suit of armor stumbled into the room, carrying a number of books in his arms. "They didn't have a lot of translated books on Xing so I had them dig out the ones that weren't translated too!"

Xingese was easy to read and easier to speak. Sometimes Ed liked it more than Amestrian. Amestrian was rough as a language -so was Ed's way of speaking, but that was  _beside_  the point- but Xingese was smooth, rolling easily off the tongue, Ed liked the way it sounded more than his native tongue, but maybe he was just biased because of the soulmark on his neck.

"This is all they had on Xing?" Ed's brow furrowed in confusion. He knew there were some very large sections on Creta and Drachma and Aerugo…Xing was the one country that Amestris wasn't close to being at war with, he would've thought there would've been more on it.

"Yeah, they didn't have much." Al sounded a bit annoyed by it too. He sounded almost like Ed, actually, and it made his lips twitch. "It sounds like books on Xing or Xingese alchemy aren't of much value here when Amestris could be trading for silks or weapons."

Ed scoffed in annoyance.  _What a waste_. Who would care about that sort of stuff when there was alchemy to be familiarizing yourself with?

He picked up one of the books, thumbing it open with interest, eyes flicking over the Xingese characters, translating them in his head. This book appeared to be one that focused on folklore that echoed Amestris' about how alchemy came into being. The Tale of the Eastern Sage was the one from Amestris, according to it, the kingdom of Xerxes, an almost mythical place that had long been claimed by the sands of time, was destroyed in a single night and that the only survivor wandered into Amestris shortly afterwards, he was the one that went on to spread the science of alchemy.

Xing, apparently, had a similar story, only instead of the Eastern Sage, it was called the Western Sage, about a man who had come from the West who combined his teachings with their own ancient techniques to create what was known in Xing as alkahestry.

The ruins of Xerxes were still around, they rested between Xing and Amestris, being from Xerxes could indicate why the surviving man was known as the Eastern Sage to Amestris and the Western Sage to Xing; the countries were in opposite directions…but it seemed to Ed that everything led back to Xerxes.

"Hey, Al…" he said slowly, not looking up from the book. "Do you think there's any books on Xerxes?"

"Um…" If Ed had been paying attention he would've heard the apprehension overlaying the carefully constructed thoughtful tone, but he was too focused on the book in his hands. "No, I think there was just that page about the Philosopher's Stone had how it was used to destroy the kingdom of Xerxes in a single night…why?"

Ed didn't know, Al had thought it best not to tell him that when he'd called back to say he'd gotten certified, Al had taken a large wooden box over to the house and piled inside it all the books in Dad's library, the ones they'd taught themselves how to use alchemy with and the ones they hadn't even touched yet. All the books and pictures of them all together as a family, and a few things that had belonged to their mother. Granny had clucked her tongue, knowing they were planning to burn down the house and thinking he should tell Ed what he'd taken from it before they could do so, but she still let him store it all in the basement.

Al would have to tell him one day, but somehow, he didn't think it would end well.

"Just a thought," Ed waved him off, "it seems like everything started in Xerxes, that's where we get the alchemy that we use today…and if that's where the Philosopher's Stone first came from…maybe it wouldn't hurt to look around."

"In the ruins?" Al was intrigued. "Isn't that in the Eastern Desert, though? Isn't there nothing but sand for miles?" Nothing but sand for miles that would get trapped in his armor, and traveling through the desert with automail probably wouldn't be the best course of action for Ed.

"Probably," Ed cupped his chin thoughtfully, opening with mouth to say more when he jumped violently as the door slid open loudly to reveal a very familiar person with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a toolbox over one shoulder. "H-hey, Winry," he said in a voice that clearly said he'd rather be running in the opposite direction.

" _Edward Elric,"_  Winry Rockbell bared her teeth in a grin that might've looked sweet to anyone else, but Ed had seen it too many times before being brained with a wrench, "just what've you been up to?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winry is definitely a lesbian, someone didn't want her to have a girlfriend but its Winpan in this fic and that's not changing.
> 
> Papa!Roy is my jam, so you'll see so much more of it.


	6. Father Material

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad everyone enjoyed the Papa!Roy last chapter, don't worry, its only gonna get better, because I love the relationship the Elrics have with Roy…mostly in my head, some in canon, but that's why this is fanfic
> 
> Everyone loving what an utter lesbian Winry is gonna be is my jam, though :)

Winry was used to the calls by now -or  _not_ calling and Ed and Al showing up at her and Granny's house, Ed's automail arm no longer in functioning condition- but she'd figured this was just like all the other times before; that Ed picked a fight, got hurt, but won.

Colonel Mustang was a name she knew very well at this point, though the last time she'd seen him had been almost two years ago when he'd yelled at Ed and Al for what they'd done, his eyes hard and dark. Ed complained about him enough, but Al liked him, so Winry was more likely to trust his ability to gauge someone's positive qualities than his hair-trigger-temper brother; on the other hand, if Al didn't trust you, then there was  _no way_  Winry was trusting any word you spoke.

Al was a freaking  _treasure_. (Ed's words, not hers, but it still wasn't a lie)

But Colonel Mustang was quite easy to spot. He stood out in his military uniform among the sea of civilians. He lifted a hand, maybe slightly recognizing her, but Winry didn't remember him paying her much attention when he and Lieutenant Hawkeye came to Resembool.

"Colonel Mustang?" Winry asked carefully. It was best to make sure so she didn't make a fool of herself.

He inclined his head, smiling disarmingly, charmingly, and if Winry had been into men, she might've blushed, but she settled on a smile of her own, tentative and testing waters. This was the man Ed (and Al) reported to, this was the man known as the Flame Alchemist, this was the man called the Hero of Ishval - _he got to go home, why didn't Mom and Da-no!_  Winry had to shut those thoughts down quick. Ed and Al could find out the truth about their deaths, but it wasn't fair to distract Ed and Al, even with them having more resources, their bodies mattered more than Winry getting answers.

"Miss Rockbell," Colonel Mustang said kindly, "I hope you're well?"

Winry thought it was best not to snort. Did people actually greet each other like that in the city? Winry preferred swearing at people she hadn't seen in a while, ("Where the _fuck_  have you been?" she demanded in delight) maybe that was just her being an asshole or being from the country -Ed thought it was both, but Ed didn't count, he was a little shit  _one hundred percent_  of the time.

"I'm all right," she said. "Al told me Ed was gonna need a service call." Al had said a lot of things, told her about Ed's condition, his worries about his brother. The idea that someone had gone out of their way to try to kill Ed was appalling and terrifying and Winry didn't know  _what to do._

Ed and Al were her best friends…and she couldn't even help them with that, she couldn't tell them  _not_ to do what they did. She could probably ask them to be safer, but she doubted it would make much of a difference.

There'd been a newspaper left on the seat beside her on the train with the headline  _'PEOPLE'S ALCHEMIST CATCHES SERIAL KILLER -Serial killer 'the Chopper' eluding police was caught by the Fullmetal Alchemist!'_  That sounded like an impressive thing, and Winry knew that rumors had been spreading about Ed for a while, and she had to say, it was incredibly  _sad_ that he was the only State Alchemist known -or at least,  _well known_ \- to extend a hand to the common folk without any regard to his reputation, or if doing so would get him in hot water. Ed and Al really were the best people she knew, and she meant that sincerely. They were idiots,  _yeah_ , but they were  _her_  idiots.

"Fullmetal's in the hospital for a few more days, but he's recovering well—" The Colonel made a gesture with his hand for her to follow him and she did, shouldering her toolbox masterfully.

Winry wanted to ask  _-where was he? Ed was almost thirteen, did he even_ care _when his subordinate was bleeding out?-_ but she held her tongue instead, though suspicious, worried, and annoyed all in one, luckily for the Colonel, she was distracted by the sight of Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye -she'd gone up from second to first in the past two years- and  _wow!_  She looked  _good!_  Like, obviously too old for Winry -she wasn't Aunt Trisha, large age gaps bothered her  _immensely-_  but she was  _very pretty_  and her hair had grown out…Winry had to work at not getting tongue-tied.

"Hey, Lieutenant Hawkeye!" She waved wildly in excitement, hoping the flush on her cheeks was light enough to be mistaken for her natural pigmentation or from the humidity in East City.

Winry was effectively distracted for no less than five minutes -be still her little gay heart- before she was ushered into the car so Lieutenant Hawkeye could drive them to the hospital.

"Ed'll be all right, though?" she asked Colonel Mustang.

"Just so long as he takes it easy, I've been assured." Colonel Mustang gave her a faint smile and it jarred Winry, like seeing her father's faint amusement at Ed and Al creating her a doll from alchemy when she was a little girl. She wasn't expecting it.

Winry looked away quickly, blinking furiously. It had been years, almost as long as Aunt Trisha had been gone, almost as long as Hohenheim had abandoned his sons and wife, but it still stung like an open wound.

"He's not too happy with me right now for putting him on leave from field work, but recovery takes time."

"I think he might've been more annoyed about having to wear the uniform, sir," Lieutenant Hawkeye spoke up from the front.

Winry paused, trying to imagine Ed, four foot something Ed, with his long braid, permanent scowl and his terrible fashion sense and platform boots to make him look taller, wearing  _the Amestrian military uniform._

She just about died of laughter.

"Oh, get me a picture!" Winry howled.

* * *

He could've looked worse, she supposed. He was pale enough that it showed in his dark cheeks, but not enough to be overly concerned, not like when she and Granny had had to care for him after he'd lost his arm and leg; he'd been almost translucent then, which was _saying_ something. The braid seemed to be in working condition, which was good, because Winry would've felt obligated to tie it herself and she was  _shit_  at braids, bad enough that Ed had complained about it.

"H-hey, Winry." He worked at keeping the terror out of his voice and Winry's grin widened. He'd been expecting the wrench, apparently. Ironically, this was the  _one_  time Winry wouldn't dare to bring it against his temple; Ed's injuries, this time, weren't his fault. "How's it going?"

"Why is it that I only ever see you and Al is if your automail is busted?" Her eyes were sharp and Ed cowered slightly behind Al's large armored body, only to squeak and whimper, curving into a ball.

" _Brother!_  Are you all right?"

Winry had approached suddenly at the sight of his pain, worry sparking across her face. She could just barely see the bandages disappearing under the hem of his hospital shirt.

"Moved too fast," Ed gave a pain-filled grunt. "Gimme a sec."

He pressed a button beside him and Winry gave him a few moments to let the pain meds do their work while she took a look at the automail arm that Al had apparently been guarding -Al was really  _too sweet_. She held it in her hands, hefting it. She'd only repaired it twice since he'd gotten it, though she wasn't surprised to hear it had been damaged; Ed wasn't exactly the  _best_  at keeping his arm in functioning condition, the  _moron._  But she was surprised at how little it was damaged this time around.

It must've just popped right off…it wasn't supposed to do that. A flash of panic rocketed through her. She'd screwed up the last time she'd checked it, that had to be it. The catches the locked it completely in place had been misaligned or—

"Stop worrying about it," Ed told her tiredly when the pain had smoothed from his brow. "You always say that destroying the arm completely would send a shock through my body enough to knock me out - _probably_ \- it was better that it just popped off this way."

Winry swallowed, trying not to imagine golden hair red-stained or crimson splashed across dark cheeks.  _No!_  She couldn't think about that! Ed was  _fine,_  he was _alive_ , and he was  _recovering_ …everything had worked out.

"Its not too badly damaged, is it?" There was a false sort of cheer in Al's voice, like he was forcing himself to be upbeat.

Winry decided it was best not to make a big deal about the situation. Ed _really_  hated that. So, she examined the arm closely, her fine craftsmanship, her handiwork. Ed's arm had been resized a few times, though not very much, since the initial placement, and she had been the one that had built it and rebuilt it over and over.

"It's not too bad," she noticed in relief. "It might take me an hour, then I'll get out of your hair."

Both Ed and Al looked at her curiously.

" _What?_  We've got other clients than you, you know," Winry joked. "I've got to get back and help Granny as soon as I'm done with you…and she also wanted me to make sure you were okay."

Ed's cheeks flushed in embarrassment and he rubbed his fingers over the soulmark on his throat, a nervous tick that Winry doubted he'd ever grow out of. "I'll be okay."

Winry picked up her tools. "Making any headway on getting your bodies back?"

"Um, well, not as much as we'd like," Al had to admit sadly but then he brightened, "but we're gonna keep moving forward, right, Brother?"

Ed schooled a grin onto his face just for Al, it was sweet of him, but also terribly painful. No one could say that Ed didn't want to give Al the world, even at the expense of himself. "Right, Al."

And if Ed could manage that well enough, he probably wasn't doing too badly.

The fear that had been coiling in Winry's stomach vanished as she set to work. The arm wasn't going to set itself.

* * *

Connecting the nerves was always the worst, especially for Ed. The first time they'd done it, he'd passed out for a solid twenty-seven hours. He still passed out, that was how painful his body found it -how painful  _he_  found it- but at least it took significantly less time for time to come around.

Winry just barely coaxed him into doing the arm exercises to make sure that nothing was out of place this time around before he passed out a second time.

"Don't worry," Al assured her, "its just that he's recovering from blood loss…and Ed sleeps a lot now anyways."

That was true enough, even back in Resembool after  _everything_ , when the wounds were too new, too  _fresh_  for them to even attempt placing the ports and connecting the automail limbs into them, he'd spent a large amount of his time sleeping.

"Look after each other, or I'll come back and use my wrench on both of you." Winry's smile was a feral grin full of teeth ready to bite.

"A-Sure." A part of her was glad that even though Al was inside an armor so large and hulking, he could still be the child he was, afraid of Winry's wrench.

She gave him a hug, even though he couldn't feel it, even though the armor was hard and a bit cold. She gave him a hug because he needed it, remembering the small boy that had once clung to his older brother's arm on the playground, Ed's fists balled, ready to deck the kid that had had a go at his baby brother.

"This isn't forever," she felt the need to remind him, "one day you'll be back to normal and everything will be the way it was before." (She hoped)

"Thanks, Winry," he said in a way that told her her words had relieved him, and Winry would take that.

Winry waved goodbye. "And keep an eye out for a pretty girl with a figure eight tattoo!"

Al laughed loudly.

* * *

In a small but thriving town called Rush Valley, a dark-skinned girl with eyes so dark a blue that they almost seemed black at first glance had to pause in attempting a filch an expensive watch in order to hold back a sneeze, feeling warm behind her ears, the complete figure eight over her wrist clear to see as she swung her arms.

* * *

"I look like an  _idiot."_

"You look like a soldier in the Amestrian military," Al corrected in a winning voice and Ed knew the brief flash he'd caught had been from a camera, though he'd never actually seen one in Al's hands.

Ed scowled at himself in the mirror. True to form, almost immediately after his release from the hospital, Mustang had called to remind him that he was due at 'work' at 0700 -was it today or tomorrow? Ed had been too annoyed to tell- and Ed wished he could've strangled his commanding officer through the phone, because he  _definitely_  would've…if it wouldn't pull so much at his stitches. He was still annoyed with him for taking him out of the field until his wounds were healed but Lieutenant Hawkeye had once walked in on him complaining about it in the hospital and had merely quirked an eyebrow.

Ed had clammed up fast, but luckily, he relaxed when she handed him a small pudding cup that she'd managed to sneak away from one of the food delivery people. She'd laughed when he exalted her to the high heavens.

"Yeah, like I said,  _an idiot."_  Ed continued scowling at himself. His hair was in the trademark long braid down his back, swinging with every movement; he'd considered pinning it up a bit more, but why bother making him look like more of a girl?

There was one star on each of his shoulders and the ranking pins on his left breast to indicate his rank as Major, even though he hated it, never used it, and never wanted to. The cavalry skirt was rather long on him, almost reaching his ankles and he just  _knew_ that the Colonel Bastard was going to make a comment about his height.

There was nothing dramatic about his appearance  _at all,_  and that was the most annoying part about it.

"You're going down to the library, right?" he asked Al, playing with the braided gold aiguillette before rubbing at his forehead a little, tilting his head to the side, the soulmark obvious and black against his skin, not dark enough to disappear into his complexion. "Gonna see if they have anything on Xerxes?"

"Maybe!"

Al sounded evasive, even to Ed's ears, and he couldn't help but narrow his eyes suspiciously. "All right, have fun."

"You just don't want me to see their reaction to you wearing the uniform," Al spoke sagely and Ed flushed in embarrassment at being caught out.

"No!" Ed denied vainly, but Al could only laugh before waving him goodbye. It was still early, and he bet that Breda and Havoc were still sleeping, they weren't known for being early. Falman was generally right on time, or just barely early. Fuery was the same. Hawkeye and Mustang were usually the only ones really early.

Ed gritted his teeth before clenching the door and opening it. The hallway in the dorms was empty, so Ed didn't have to worry about running into anyone on his way to the office.

The office where he'd been stabbed, the office where'd almost bled out, the office where Lieutenant Colonel Hughes had asked him to recount in detail everything that had happened.

Ed could do this, Ed could do this… _right?_

He swallowed and continued on.

* * *

There were several things that Edward Elric was known for: being loud and obnoxiously, having the absolute  _worst_  taste, never wearing the military uniform, hardly ever being on time, being particularly sensitive about his height, and always opening the door with a subtle crash.

Those were all things that Roy expected of him.

But the idea of Ed actually being early, or coming in at all, was surprising. Roy would've expected that Ed would take a day to himself; he had just been released from the hospital a day ago… _no one_ wanted to come into work that badly. Ed didn't even  _like_  office work, so Roy couldn't imagine why he would want to come in an hour early.

Roy himself had a tendency to come in early and then sleep periodically throughout the day. Some nights he was lucky, others he woke up to the smell of burning flesh and copper on the tip of his tongue and ash in his mouth and smoke in his nose.

Ishval had left its mark on him, just as it had on everyone else.

Hawkeye still wasn't due to show up for at least another forty-five minutes, so Roy leaned over slightly to look through the open door that led into his office to blink and then stare.

The door into the main office had opened quietly to admit a short blond-haired boy, dressed in the proper military blues, his ranking pins on correctly and not a hair out of place. Roy was actually impressed. The kid cleaned up nice, given he usually traipsed into the office tracking mud and blood, his hair barely in the braid, and his trademark red coat ripped in more than one way. Seeing him dressed properly made Roy wonder if this was even reality or if Roy was hallucinating, because it was a  _definite_ possibility.

Ed's eyes had fixed on a spot, not appearing to even notice that Roy was there.

The blood had been wiped away, but Roy doubted he was going to forget something like that in a hurry.

A hand was pressed against his stomach, where, hidden beneath the uniform, Roy knew, a bandage lay pasted over the stitches that Ed still needed to keep in. The blood appeared to have fled from his face and he teetered dangerously.

"Fullmetal." Roy was out of his chair and striding over to his subordinate to press a hand to his shoulder. When he didn't respond, Roy rose his voice slightly.  _"Fullmetal."_

Ed blinked hazily, raising his eyes fix on Roy's, but it was like he wasn't there, it was like he was miles away.

"Come with me, Ed," Roy said, using his grip on the kid's shoulder to direct him, unresistingly towards Roy's office before being deposited on one of the couches there.

He sat there like he was in shock while Roy pulled out the tray from the cupboard directly outside his office, heating the water, pouring the tea and bringing it back with him.

Ed would've made a joke about that any other day - _the day's not even started yet and you're already procrastinating on paperwork by making tea? Come on, Colonel-_  but this time he was quiet, pale-faced, and utterly exhausted.

Maybe the tea would help.

Ed took the cup listlessly, taking a tentative sip. Roy guessed he didn't mind the taste.

"Better?" he asked carefully.

Ed gave a half-shrug. "All right," he conceded, rubbing a hand against his forehead hard enough to leave a brief mark.

"You could've taken the day off."

Ed snorted. "A day off…right…who's got that kind of time?"

Mustang sat across from him, taking his own cup of tea. "Where's Al?"

"At the library." Ed took another drink from his cup, almost draining it in one go. "He thinks there might be a link between the lost kingdom of Xerxes and getting our bodies back."

"An interesting theory, though I doubt there's many books on Xerxes." Roy had been fascinated by the myth himself when he was a child, still studying under Master Hawkeye.

"Y'never know," Ed shrugged again, his eyes fixing on the doorway. "They replaced the glass, yeah?"

Roy cast a glance over him, trying to ascertain how he was feeling about the whole thing, but Ed's face was blissfully blank. "Yeah…do you want us to put a rug down over the spot on the floor?" There wasn't really any sign of where his blood had once spilled, but Roy could plainly tell that the area bothered him.

Ed's eyebrow furrowed in annoyance and he set the teacup down a little harder than necessary and Roy was sure if he'd used his automail hand it probably would've broken. "Why're you being so damn accommodating, Colonel?"

Ah, Edward, ever on edge. Roy had to wonder if the kid was ever going to relax…though his idea of relaxing was burying himself in alchemic research, so that was probably for the best.

"Maybe I just want a rug in the main office?" Roy's lips were curling into his telltale smirk. "If I put one under your chair it might bring you a little closer to the desk."

A dangerous growl erupted from Ed's throat. "I'm gonna  _kill you!"_  Ed swore, looking ready for a brawl, even if his body wasn't.

"Maybe you should settle for giving yourself stilts so you can actually reach me."

" _You wanna go?!"_

Ed stood up suddenly, the only moment when he would probably ever tower over Roy who had remained seated, but he'd moved too quickly and his face went pinched as he fell back to couch, bending forward and cradling his abdomen.

"Are you all right?" The concern pulsed through Roy like fire.

 _God_ , was this what being a father felt like? Common ground and concern? Throwing inhibitions out the window when children were hurt? Roy didn't think it suited him  _at all._

"Fine," Ed rasped. "I'm just…not gonna get up anytime soon."

He scooched himself into lying sideways on the couch without any care in the world, though Roy had been half a second away from offering it to him. The kid looked  _terrible._

"For some reason the boys trust you," Izumi Curtis had said before she left, "I don't know  _why_  and I think they're  _idiots_ but that's beside the point—"

"Al might, but Ed definitely doesn't," Roy had been certain.

Izumi had given him a sharp look with unending annoyance. "You don't strike me as a stupid man, Colonel Mustang but you can't tell me that you  _don't_  see how that boy looks up to you. His own father abandoned him, his brother, and his mother, you're the first person you gave his life structure and discipline and even  _care,_  even if neither of you want to admit it…Ed might like Sig, but he  _trusts_  you, so, do me a favor and don't break that, or I'll break your entire  _body."_

How many times had Ed fallen asleep in Roy's office? He didn't even know the number. Al said that usually he hardly slept anywhere unless he was sure Al was around to keep an eye on things, but Roy had come into work several times to find Ed passed out on the couch, an alchemy book open on his head as he breathed in and out deeply with Al being nowhere in sight.

Roy was left to ponder that, returning to his desk to get started on paperwork (maybe) when the door opened and Hawkeye greeted him before approaching his office, blinking only once at the sight of the boy now easily slumbering on Roy's couch. A faint smile softened her face and she extended a paper to Roy.

He almost sighed but then he took it only to stare at its contents.

"I thought you'd like to see this before I had it filed, sir," she said kindly.

It was a release of medical records for Major Edward Elric. It had been amended on the line for next of kin.

The third people to be notified if the first and second were unavailable were the Curtises, and the first was, of course, Alphonse Elric, but the second caught his eye:  _Roy Mustang._

His smile was so faint it was almost unseen, but Hawkeye caught it easily.

"The next thing you know you'll be adopting those boys and you and Lieutenant Colonel Hughes will finally have something to talk about," Hawkeye said mildly and with great amusement as she took the paper back, especially when Roy choked.

"Yeah, that'll be the day," he finally managed to force out.

_Like hell I'm father material. What kind of man drags a twelve-year-old kid into the military?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Papa!Roy is a fucking mood and there's gonna be so much more before Ling even meets Ed, which makes me sad, but this fic is gonna end up like 50% Papa!Roy and 50% Edling, so like everything anyone could possibly want!
> 
> And Roy doesn't even think he's dad material, how hilarious is that?


	7. Rumors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone loving Papa!Roy and Winry being hella gay and the Elrics being dark-skinned because Hohenheim was from a freaking desert country lol
> 
> It's the fourth day of Edling week and I'm not sure this really counts since the Edling hasn't actually happened in the fic yet, but its pick your favorite au, so soulmate au it is!

Ed was fully conscious enough to listen to Breda and Havoc poke fun at how  _adorable_  he was in uniform and even more conscious to threaten them with murder,  _the bastards_. And he knew Mustang got a picture of it, which annoyed him even more, but he figured screaming at the guy wasn't going to do him many favors with his stitches the way they were…that, and he was using Mustang's couch and coffee table like it was his personal desk.

It was rather accommodating of Mustang given his initial reaction to entering the outer office and Ed was trying not to let it show how relieved or surprised he was by Mustang's actions.

Of course, he was still doing Mustang's work that the man should've been doing himself, which was a bit souring but Ed was really good at math, and he'd taken a look at the pile of papers before him, Mustang, Hawkeye, Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery…there was _no_  reason that this office was getting that  _much_  paperwork. There were a lot of different offices in Eastern Command, there was literally no reason to give Mustang this much work.

"Hey, Mustang?" Mustang hummed to indicate he was listening (to indicate he was alive) and Ed didn't even bother to look up from the papers he was sorting. He'd lucked out with the easy job, but Ed was pretty sure that it was just a way to ease him into work which was simultaneously relieving and annoying. "Do other Colonels have to do as much work as you?"

That made him grin widely. "Think I'm doing a lot of work, Fullmetal? Is it because the pile of paper is too tall for you to see over?"

Ed's teeth snapped tight and he growled. "Thin  _fucking_  ice, Bastard Colonel."

Mustang's eyes gleamed and Ed almost expected him to pull out another jibe about his height, but Mustang, surprisingly, let it go. "The higher-ups don't appreciate my ambition as much, in comparison to the other Colonels."

Ed furrowed his brow in confusion, looking over to Mustang this time to see him put down his pen (he'd been doodling, Ed would bet his military pension on it, even if he couldn't see the paper from his position) to give Ed his full attention, like he was the most important person in the room.

Ed didn't understand that or why it made his chest feel tight. Most of his first five years of life had encompassed trying to gain the attention of Hohenheim and utterly failing. If there was one memory of the man that was biologically his father, it was of his back -sitting in his office surrounded by books on alchemy, as he left out the front door without a glance back-, gaining his attention had never been without effort.

With Mustang it was effortless. Al always found the attention on him, good or bad and he certainly shone under the good, like when they were in Eastern Command with Mustang and his subordinates. He was used to people being afraid of his imposing appearance as a large suit of armor that being actually treated like a kid made him warm and… _gooey._

Ed wasn't sure how he felt about it.

He almost looked away, hoping his warring emotions and confusion weren't clear on his face, but Mustang was giving him his full attention, Ed should respond with the same.

"Is ambition a bad thing?" He had no way of knowing that his look of confusion had morphed into a pout many would consider adorable and Roy wasn't immune to its power just like he wasn't immune to Al's puppy eyes despite them only being pinpricks of light. He really _was_  far too soft where the brothers were concerned.

"Not  _necessarily_ , but I have jumped up the ranks rather fast," he conceded. "Obviously, you know that all State Alchemists receive the rank of Major upon certification." Ed nodded, not entirely sure where this was going. "State Alchemists were highly sought after when the war with Ishval became inevitable…I had already spent years studying under my master when I joined the military, something he didn't approve of."

Ed snorted, thinking of Izumi's dark disapproval of that particular decision of his. Maybe it was something that all alchemy instructors shared.

"The war had been going on for four years by the time I became a State Alchemist and was sent to the front lines…I was made a Major at the same time Hughes hit Captain and we were in the same classes together in the Academy." There was an almost grim sort of wistfulness about him as he said that. " _Ironically_ , that's how we found out about the whole soulmate thing, my jumping a few ranks without too much effort never seemed to bother him very much, but Hughes is a very easygoing person to begin with."

"And most of the military aren't?" Ed was guessing.

Mustang gave a careful shrug. "It takes a lot of hard work and effort to rise up the ranks. The fact that I skipped right to Major at twenty probably bothered a lot of them…and you might've noticed that most Colonels are a good deal older than me."

Ed thought about making a jibe about Mustang's age, but this seemed like a fairly serious topic that it would probably be in poor taste. He simply nodded.

"It's mostly the generals that don't like me too much, but they wouldn't, they're one step below the Fuhrer…the only thing I'm good for in their eyes is my reputation as the Hero of Ishval."

Ed frowned severely. "But a lot've generals have asked me about switching commanding officers, why would they do that if I just skipped ranks like you did?"

Mustang blinked in surprise, but then he laughed and Ed could feel an embarrassed and traitorous flush rising in his cheeks. " _Hey, jerk!_  Why're you  _laughing?"_

"I think you'd get more majors and soldiers below them irritated about that, especially since you don't seem to care too much about the military, but the generals would rather have you under them instead because it would help their reputation to have the People's Alchemist answering to them."

A crease appeared between Ed's eyebrows. He didn't think it really meant that much, to be known as the People's Alchemist. Surely, something like that didn't matter as much to powerful generals.

"Overloading me with paperwork and then claiming that I'm inefficient would be a good way for me to lose the star State Alchemist I've got answering to me," he explained helpfully.

Ed had never been quite so startled as he looked at Mustang. It sounded like the military dealt with a lot of underhanded internal politics than anything else and he didn't like it, though that might've just been him hating on politics in general.

"Does that answer your question?" Mustang arched an eyebrow.

Ed shrugged his shoulders. "I  _guess,"_  he said and went back to sorting the papers, not noticing how Mustang was considering him.

"Do you ever think about what would've happened if your father stuck around?" Mustang asked him bluntly and Ed choked on his tongue and almost broke his pen as he jerked his head towards Mustang, fury in his eyes -if he was probing into Ed and Al's personal life as a way to procrastinate,  _the utter bastard_ \- but all he saw there was honest interest.

"Why does it matter?" he snapped, trying to return his attention to the paper before him.

"Edward." Ed hated when he so directly said his name, it reminded him of Hohenheim too. "I don't like talking about the Ishvalan Civil War, even a little, the least you could do would be to extend the same."

Equivalent exchange was a concept they were both familiar with, as alchemists, and Ed hated that he'd pulled it, but it wasn't like he was actually wrong. Ed started to shuffle the papers into the appropriate folders.

"Things would've been different if the bastard had stuck around," Ed finally forced out, "things would've been different if Mom hadn't gotten sick…but I could think about what could've gone differently a thousand times and it wouldn't change anything; Al and I're still here, still trying to get our bodies back, wanting it to be different won't actually  _change_  anything."

He was supposed to file this shit somewhere right? Ed piled up the folders, and he really should've been watching his mouth a bit more, but evidently his ability to multitask was negligible at best that day.

"Besides, you're doing a better job than he ever did and you're not even trying."

He didn't think anything of it, his words, not right then, it was only when Mustang choked that it dawned on him.

_Ohshitohshitohshit!_

"SORRY, GOTTA GO!" Ed didn't care how loud his yell was as he grabbed up all the folders and kicked his way out of Mustang's office, ignoring the call of  _"Hey, Fullmetal!"_  behind him, his dark cheeks flooded with a traitorous warmth that had almost everything to do with embarrassment.

He barely heard Hawkeye's question behind him and he made it out of the door of the outer office, trying very hard not to bury his face in his hands -especially since he was holding an awful lot of folders and dropping them meant he'd have to resort everything. If only he could shove those words back into his mouth.

Roy Mustang wasn't like his father, not by a longshot (but maybe that was why he preferred him to Hohenheim in the first place).

* * *

The library in Eastern Command was very large and had a large number of books that were off limits to the civilian public. Al was lucky in that respect, because both Ed and the Colonel had written to allow him permission inside it. Even if they'd tried to refuse Ed on the grounds that he was Al's only living relative and allowing him in the library was some kind of breach (of security? Confidentiality? Al wasn't sure, but he was sure they would've come up with something), Colonel Mustang's signature was enough for them to concede.

The head librarian was a woman named Second Lieutenant Colette Nobile who had kind brown eyes and dark hair clipped short, and she was very familiar with Al by now. She was one of the few people in Eastern Command that actually saw past his armor and treated him like the kid he was.

"Hello, Alphonse!" she waved cheerily when he entered the room. "You're here early."

It was better that most people didn't know about him and his lack of ability to sleep, to feel, to…to do a lot of things that he _wished_  he could.

"Yeah, couldn't really sleep," he did his best to come off as a sheepish eleven-year-old being caught out, but all she did was smile.

"How's your brother doing? I heard he just got out of the hospital." Her eyes softened.

"He's doing better." Al snorted a bit. "He really didn't like being stuck in the hospital, though, he really hates those. But he's more annoyed about being on desk duty right now."

Colette laughed loudly, her laughter echoing in the silence of the library -it wasn't usually packed full of people, that was true enough, but it was ever eerier when they were the only ones there. "Yeah, that doesn't really surprise me…did Colonel Mustang actually get him into the uniform."

The giggle inside the armor told her enough. "Please tell me you got a picture!"

Proof or it didn't happen.

And as it so happened, Al did have that proof. He pulled out the picture he'd just barely managed to snap that morning.

"Now, doesn't he look  _adorable!"_  Colette was almost cackling. "He should wear the uniform more, its suits him more than the red."

"I don't think he'd agree," Al giggled some more, tucking the picture away. If Ed knew about it, he'd probably kill Al, all while being completely red in the face, but if Al was really pushing his luck, he'd show it to the Colonel and watch Ed flounder.

No one said that Al didn't have a devious streak; he was Ed's  _brother_ after all.

So, he waved to Colette before heading off in the direction of the history section. There had been nothing on Xerxes in the public library and very little on Xing, in a rather disappointing way. Al wasn't quite sure what that all meant, but he couldn't help but be suspicious. What he'd read up on Xingese alkahestry sounded intriguing but there were hardly any books that did more than mention it. Xerxes was even  _more_ elusive.

There were absolutely _no_  books on the subject, not in the public library, and as Al scoured the military library, he discovered that it was very much the same. And that was the oddest thing, because _obviously_ Xerxes was still around, the ruins of it, at least, you would've thought that there'd be at least  _something_ on it.

But the absence of data was in and itself data, that was something he and Ed had learned in their search for the Philosopher's Stone. Xerxes was renowned for its advancements of the time, so how could a civilization _that_  advanced fall, let alone in a single night…and why did there appear to be absolutely nothing on the country at all? Especially when it was known that Xerxes was from where Amestrian alchemy had sprung? How could anyone know that if there were absolutely no books on the matter?

Had there been a purge of Xerxes-related books at some point? Even to Al it seemed to be an odd thing to do, but he couldn't really come up with a reason to why anyone would want to remove them otherwise.

"Not everyone is conspiring against you," the Colonel had once said to Ed, patting the top of his head as Ed's expression was caught somewhere between a scowl and a pout.

But it was so easy to feel like that. Every lead they had for the Philosopher's Stone had dead ended, Al was old enough to think that was a bit suspicious. Ed might've been the genius, but Al knew, without shame or doubt, that he wasn't that far behind.

There were so many suspicions he had already but he had to wonder about the books he'd collected from Dad's study and hidden in the Rockbell's basement. Was it possible that there might've been something in there on Xerxes? Their father had a lot of old things in the study…but he was absolutely certain that Ed would pitch a  _fit_  to find out that he'd taken things from the house before they'd torched it.

Well, he couldn't really kill Al if Al was at the train station already, could he?

(Even Al knew that it was a terrible idea, but was that going to stop him _? Of course not!_  He was an Elric after all)

* * *

Ed's emotions had cooled as he made his way around the command post. He didn't spend more time than he had to at Eastern Command,  _if_ he could get away with it, so he didn't know his way as well as he would like, luckily, though, the lady at the main desk recognized his predicament and pointed him in the right direction for each of his prospective destinations, though most of his files took him to the records room, which was helpful; it was less people to deal with, which Ed was all for.

Talking too much with people, _especially_  people that he didn't know, took a lot out of him. Winry said he was just introverted but Granny had puffed on her tobacco pipe and told him to take time to himself if he was feeling too wrung out ("I know you boys want to get your bodies back," Granny had said seriously, "but it'll be useless if you emotionally exhaust yourself too much for it to actually happen.")

The records room had a confusing arrangement that made it almost impossible for Ed to find the right spaces to place the files in question (and he was too stubborn to ask for help again, so toughing it out was his only option), but then he only had one folder left to deliver.

Ed paused before leaving, his fingers trailing over the words 'personnel'. Curiosity reared its head and Ed found himself moving to the E's and pulling out the file on ' _Elric, E_.' It was relatively thin, which was expected, since Ed had only joined the military almost a year ago. His picture stared out at him from the first page, listing his details -his family, his height (he gritted his teeth at that;  _he'd grown some!),_  his commanding officer. There were a few notes on missions he'd been a part of, with surprisingly glowing reviews, which was weird because Ed tended to finish something and leave the area immediately afterwards and his attitude was negligible at best (it was something Al reproached him for  _constantly)._

He shook his head, shutting the folder and sliding it back into place before looking down and moving along to consider the M's next. He traced over the name:  _Mustang, R_. Mustang's file was a great deal thicker than Ed's, but he'd been serving in the military for far longer.

Ed could open the file if he wanted. There was no one here to complain or see what he was doing, but he remembered how Mustang had spoke that morning, mentioning Ishval. Ironically, Ed didn't know a lot about Mustang, but it seemed like a huge invasion of privacy to open the folder when the man hadn't opened much up about himself in the first place.

He straightened up and stepped back away from the shelf, heading out the way he'd come, with the last folder tucked under his arm and without a second look back. He should've realized at that point that he was pushing his luck with hoping to hardly have to interact with anyone when he stopped by the secretary to General Quinton Symons to hand off the last folder.

"So, this is the famous Fullmetal Alchemist I've heard so much about," a voice spoke to Ed's left and the secretary stood to salute with a "General!" so Ed figured it would be bad form to not to so; Mustang might've been willing to overlook his insolence to proper military protocol, but he doubted this general would.

He saluted -reluctantly and briefly and _hated_  it the whole time- finally getting a good look at him. He was older than Mustang with salt and pepper hair and eyes that looked like they spent a great deal of time squinting. And Ed  _really_  didn't like the look in his eyes.

"That's me," he said without inflection.

"Must be hard to have your father for your commanding officer," General Symons said in a consoling sort of way.

"I -what?" Ed thought maybe his brain wasn't functioning correctly -when was the last time he'd eaten? Maybe his brain was trying to tell him something- because there was  _no way_  anyone in their right mind would think Mustang could be his dad.

Like obviously,  _unfortunately,_  Hohenheim was Ed and Al's biological father, their coloring made it impossible to be otherwise. They shared his golden hair and eyes and his darker skin. Did Ed wish he shared more features with his mom?  _Definitely,_  but that didn't change the fact that there was clearly  _no doubt_  as to who his biological father was.

But Mustang was, what, _fifteen_  years older than Ed? Which meant he would've had to have been that old when Ed was born and the idea that someone would think that Mustang fathering a kid at fourteen or fifteen was  _more plausible_  than any other theory as to why Ed chose to serve under a 'less experienced' Colonel than a more experienced General was literally  _numbing_ Ed's brain.

Seriously?  _What the fuck?_  What. The.  _Fuck._

All right, fine,  _maybe_  Mustang had a paternal air about him -one that annoyed Ed as much as it soothed him- but genetics didn't lie and if anyone had bothered to check instead of gossiping like they had nothing better to do, they would've been able to figure that out!

"He's not my father," Ed just barely managed to keep the contempt out of his voice. "Excuse me."

He was gone before the general could reel him back in and Ed had no idea he'd escaped yet another attempt to recruit him to someone other than Colonel Mustang.

He slammed into Mustang's office like a hurricane and Mustang jolted awake, startled only to realize it was just Ed. "Oh, my wayward son has returned."

" _WHAT THE_  FUCK _, BASTARD COLONEL!"_

Lieutenant Hawkeye sighed heavily, standing in order to pull the door shut before the whole of Eastern Command was aware of Colonel Mustang and Fullmetal's most recent disagreement; might as well attempt to save at least a little face.

Breda whistled lowly. " _Damn_ …what d'you think's got the Chief so riled up?"

Havoc opened his mouth, probably to take a stab at guessing when Ed's ungodly shriek echoed "WHY DO PEOPLE THINK YOU'RE MY DAD?!"

"Huh, yeah, I thought that would be at the top of the list," Havoc admitted before nudging Fuery. "Hey, pay up, Fuery. I called the screaming match."

Hawkeye tried not to scowl as Fuery sighed and pulled out his wallet as Falman tried not to wince every time Ed's voice rose in volume, but,  _unfortunately,_  it wasn't like they didn't bet on how Ed would respond to certain things; it was always the safest bet to expect an explosion. Hawkeye had no idea why Fuery had thought that betting against Havoc would end well, because it rarely ever did.

"That's the most popular one," Breda admitted, "I'm surprised it took him almost a year to hear about it."

"Probably because he barely sticks around long enough to hear anything substantial," Hawkeye pointed out. "Don't you all have paperwork to do?"

"Mine's done!" Fuery was grinning widely, very pleased at the fact, but he withered when Hawkeye came around the cluster of desks to drop another pile on his desk that required his attention.

"Now you're not," she said with a steely look in her eye that everyone had seen bring Colonel Mustang to his knees without the affect of rain to make him completely and utterly useless. It was best to tuck your tail between your legs when it came to Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye.

"Sit  _down_ , Fullmetal! You're going to rip open your stitches and end up in the hospital,  _again!"_

"Better in the hospital than finding out people think you're  _my dad,_  which,  _by the way_ , is genetically  _impossible!_  Besides the fact that you were _fifteen_  when I was born!"

"If you don't calm down I'm going to have to put you in time-out!"

There was a high-pitched sound of rage and Havoc sniggered. "I think he's got the dad thing down, if you ask me, all the way down to punishing unruly children."

Hawkeye's mouth twitched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After Ed's relieved from desk duty I might do a year time-jump, because that'll get us closer to Ed and Ling meeting, but we'll see :)
> 
> Roy and Ed are the best and I love them…Al's debating running off to Resembool to look at the books he's got stashed there and you bet your ass Ed won't be happy about it.


	8. Sleepless Nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Addressing some questions: yes, Ed, Al, and Hohenheim are people of color in this fic which differs from canon, but Xerxes was a desert civilization so it didn't make as much sense to me for them to be white. The sun allusions are strong in this fic, especially in regards to Ed with his sun-dark skin, his golden hair and eyes, and the symbol of the sun against his throat. I guess if you're trying to figure out his exact color…I'd say lighter than Paninya and darker than Winry, but if you go on my tumblr I've tagged a lovely fanart that I based Ed off of.
> 
> Al's body doesn't exist on the physical plane, you can't have a soulmate made purely of metal with nothing but a soul attached to that metal. Mei's mark doesn't exist because Al's body doesn't, it will return when he gets his body back.

Ed didn't know why, but it really bothered him, the idea that other generals dropped their paperwork on Mustang because they didn't like his ambition. There  _had_  to be more to it than that. It seemed like it would be a lot of effort to punish someone for having ambition; Ed's ambition had once cost him almost everything and now it was the only thing keeping him going.

"Why don't you ask the other generals why they give us so much work if you're so curious?" Breda was deep into his pile when Ed had piped out the question.

He was settled across from the burly man, now, instead of sitting in Mustang's office, doing his paperwork there. After lunch -and checking in on Al to make sure that he was okay- he'd declared he could only stand so much of the Bastard Colonel and had taken the spare seat beside Hawkeye, trying not to show his relief at the sight of the throw rug over the spot where his blood at once pooled.

"And have them try to con me over to being under their command?" Ed scoffed loudly. "Yeah, like  _that'll_ happen."

Feury furrowed his brow from the other end of the table. "But you're always saying that you  _hate_  the Colonel…"

Ed sputtered, his embarrassment rising up his neck to flood his cheeks.  _"I JUST DON'T LIKE THE HASSLE OF CHANGING!"_

"Edward," Hawkeye reprimanded lightly, "please keep the yelling to a minimum in the office."

Ed quailed and swallowed thickly. "Yes, ma'am."

He'd seen Hawkeye threaten Mustang with her gun when he was being a rather terrible slacker, and he'd seen how good of a shot she was…making her mad wasn't the  _safest_ option for him at this point.

"Go take this to Colonel Mustang," she ordered swiftly, handing him a packet of papers in a folder. "Tell him he needs to have them signed in the hour."

Ed made a face, wanting to avoid Mustang after the whole 'why does all of Eastern Command think I'm your kid' issue, but then he was curious, taking it from her. "Why's he only getting it an hour before its due?"

"If I gave Colonel Mustang any  _more_  time he'd never get it done," Hawkeye said flatly. Her eyes had a twinkle, though, that made Ed snigger while Havoc and Breda had to hide their snorts when Hawkeye's eyes flicked towards them. "In  _fact_ …tell him he has half an hour, would you, Edward?"

Ed's smirk turned positively devilish. "No problem, Lieutenant."

" _Oi!_  Bastard Colonel!" Ed kicked the door open. "Lieutenant Hawkeye says you need to sign these in the next thirty minutes!"

There was a loud "She said  _what?!_  Give them here, Fullmetal!"

Ed tossed the packet onto his desk and didn't bother hiding his laughter at how Mustang did a mad scramble for the paperwork, his pen at the ready. Ed didn't wait around for him to start sniping, because he  _knew_  how Mustang got when he had a deadline and Ed was interrupting him in the middle of it. That had happened once and Ed swore Mustang had tried to kill him, even if Al didn't believe him.

He was still sniggering when he shut the door on Mustang's complaints, muffling them but in no way silencing them.

Hawkeye was hiding her smile, but it was still there when the phone on her desk gave a shrill ring. "Colonel Mustang's office, this is Lieutenant Hawkeye speaking… _oh_ , hello, Alphonse."

Ed gave a startled jerk of surprise at his brother calling instead of coming to see him. He'd only seen Al two hours ago when he was on his lunch break. What could he possibly be calling about?

"He's right here, hang on—" Hawkeye held out the phone to Ed and he took it with his flesh hand.

"Al? What's up? Didn't want to make the trip to Colonel Bastard's office?"

He could hear Breda and Havoc sniggering at the insult, as they always did, while Falman muttered under his breath about how improper and against protocol it was to insult a superior officer, while Fuery decided to just keep his head down and out of trouble.

" _Brother, I have an idea!"_  Al's voice was far too cheerful on the other side and Ed was picking up a lot of static, though, from what he couldn't quite say.  _"And you're going to hate it."_

"Yeah?" Ed's tone was a touch too sardonic and he hoped that Al didn't notice it. "It this is about the shortage of Xerxes-related books, I already—"

" _Well, kinda,"_  Al admitted,  _"I just remember seeing a book or two on Xerxes in Dad's study and—"_

"Alphonse." Ed's voice turned sharp like it always did when Hohenheim was brought up and he turned away from the prying eyes of everyone in the _freaking_  room.

" _Sorry, I know you don't like to talk about Dad, but there's probably something you should know…"_

Ed's steel fingers creaked as they clenched into a fist. "Al… _what did you do?"_

He could practically feel the stares on his back, but he ignored them as best as he could.

" _Well, see, you called after you got certified and then when you got home and we burned down the house because we didn't want a reminder of…you know?"_

"Yeah…" Ed drawled out the word slowly, getting the distinct feeling that he wasn't going to like where this was going.

" _Um…before we burned it, I took out all the books in Dad's study, some pictures, some things that Mom liked, and I hid them at Granny's."_  It all came out in a rush and Ed had to blink twice, trying to comprehend what had been said.

"You. Did.  _What?!"_  he demanded loudly.

" _So, I'm off to Resembool! See you in two weeks, Brother! Love you!"_

"Al!" But his brother had already hung up, so shouting was useless. He growled as he tried hard not to slam the phone down on the receiver, storming over to the door, his abdomen aching from the sharp movements.

"Where're you going?" Havoc asked, vaguely startled by his sudden anger.

"To East City Train Station!" Ed snarled, his hand tightening around the door knob.

"You won't make it in time."

Ed twisted around, golden fire in his eyes and Hawkeye met his eyes steadily without flinching. "If your brother was calling from the station then the train would've left by the time you actually got there. Alphonse knows you well enough to know that he should call almost exactly before his train would leave so you wouldn't be able to catch him." Hawkeye's words were patient and understanding, like Mom placating Ed when he'd felt like she liked Al more.

Ed shoved that thought out of his mind as hard as he could, glaring back to the door.

"Al's eleven," he finally managed to force out, "he's alone, and—"

"Edward, come with me and we'll get this paperwork sorted out," Hawkeye said loudly and Ed had to stare at the juxtaposition, but her expression brooked no argument and when she looked over her fellows, they quickly busied themselves.

She dropped the papers in Ed's hand before he had the chance to counter and pushed him lightly out of the room. For a moment nothing was said and then Hawkeye asked, "What did Alphonse say that upset you so much?"

Ed scowled, his lips twisting. "After I got my certification…we burned down our house." Hawkeye seemed surprised but not  _too_  surprised, so he got the feeling that she was expecting something like that. "We didn't want to look back, or have a reason to go home…or maybe we were just really ashamed of what we did." Ed shrugged helplessly. They'd been so sure in the moment, they'd been so sure before he'd been certified, but Ed couldn't help but feel like it was half a lie to themselves to make them feel better.  _"I_  didn't want a reminder, but I guess Al didn't feel the same."

Hawkeye arched an eyebrow.

"He took the books out of Hohenheim's study and some other stuff before we burned it down and didn't tell me about it." He couldn't help but feel a spike of annoyance towards his brother. Al had probably known how he could've reacted, though, which was definitely why he hadn't told him. Ed couldn't really fault that reasoning; Al had been rather spot on. "And then he runs off and -he's  _eleven!"_

Al was actually almost twelve, but that was beside the point.

"You run off and you're not much older."

Ed had an excuse worked up -he was older, there were two of them together so that didn't count- but they all fell a bit flat when he twisted his head to glower at Hawkeye and she leveled him with a steady stare. Ed clammed up again.

"Your brother is  _very good_  at taking care of himself, you're usually the one that's reckless," Hawkeye pointed out and Ed could feel his abdomen ache were the stitches were. Granted, the reason for him having those stitches wasn't his fault, but Ed had been stitched up before, often, in fact. He was generally pretty mindless when throwing himself into a fight. He didn't care how much he got injured, just so long as Al was all right.

Maybe it was some way to punish himself for what he did that night, punishing himself for locking his little brother in an iron cage and failing to find the key to unlock it.

It seemed like every lead they found was a dead end or disappeared too fast for them to pick it up. Ed didn't like it, Al didn't like it, but he was quieter about it.

"What if something happens?" he asked instead. "What if—?"

Hawkeye's smile was soft and kind and Ed was thrown off, remembering a similar smile when Ed and Al had shown Mom two little misshapen horses that they'd made with alchemy. "Listen, Edward," she said patiently, "Alphonse is careful, he knows he isn't invincible and he guards that weak spot, but one day the two of you will need to be able to work separately, just think of this as a trial run of sorts…I'm guessing he left to get a look at those books for a good reason…" She cast an eye in his direction.

"Yeah," Ed grumbled, still not pleased about it, "we're looking into Xerxes and there wasn't anything in the public library or here so he thought there might've been something—"

"Xerxes?" Hawkeye's eyebrows rose in surprise. "The City Under the Sun?"

Ed blinked in confused surprise. He'd never heard that term before. "Huh?" he asked intelligently.

"You're talking about the origin of alchemy, the place where it was created?" Hawkeye pressed on.

That made Ed pause and consider her. Hawkeye always seemed to understand more than most about alchemy. But never said why or how she knew such things. Of course, Ed had always been curious, but there were some things he'd learned to never ask about, and Hawkeye's past definitely was one of them.

"Yeah, we thought there might be something there, but we haven't been able to find any books on it." Ed gave a helpless shrug. "Hohenheim had a book that talked about how the Philosopher's Stone destroyed the city of Xerxes in a single night…that was where we got the idea to search for it to get our bodies back."

If a stone like that was strong enough to destroy a civilization, it had to be strong enough to return them to normal, but most days it felt like they were chasing ghosts.

"Maybe you'll get lucky."

"Maybe," Ed muttered doubtfully.

"Just don't be too hard on your brother, all right?" Hawkeye suggested. "He's trying to share the burden and do his part."

Ed huffed, puffing out his cheeks as she handed a packet of the papers Ed was holding to one of the secretaries.

"Besides, you couldn't follow him even if you wanted to, you're still on medical leave," Hawkeye reminded him and Ed's expression soured further.

"I hate the military," he grumbled under his breath, but he only half meant it.

Hawkeye hid another smile.

* * *

None of the other phones were in use, so Ed didn't feel about borrowing one at Eastern Command to make a call to Resembool.

" _Rockbell Prosthetic Limb Outfitters,"_  came the aged voice he knew so well.

"Hey, Granny."

He could hear the huff of a laugh or possibly just the inhale of the pipe on the other end.  _"Long time no hear, Ed, don't tell me you're calling because you messed up your arm again?"_

There was a loud and angry voice in the background  _"What d'ya mean he messed it up again! I just fixed that!"_

"No, its fine, I haven't broken it," Ed said quickly to appease them both, real fear morphing on his face even if they couldn't see it. "Al's just coming to see you."

" _Al's coming to see us,"_  Granny repeated dubiously,  _"alone?"_

Granny didn't quite approve of the path they'd taken to get their bodies  _(Al's body)_  back, especially being a part of the military that had once escorted her son and his wife to the battlefield and returned with a letter informing her of their deaths. If she could've convinced them to find another way, she would've, but Ed and Al were too  _stubborn._

"Yeah, apparently you're hiding some books he wants to look into," Ed drawled out and he could practically see Granny's expression on the other end.

" _Ah,"_  she said, comprehension dawning,  _"finally found out about that, did you?"_

"Yeah." Ed gritted his teeth together. "Tell him when you see him that I'm not mad."

" _Uh-huh."_

"I'm not  _as_  mad," Ed corrected. "I just want to know that he got there safe and stuff."

" _Ed, Al rides on dozens of trains when he's with you, I doubt this'll be any different,"_  Granny reminded him.

"Yeah—" Ed's words caught in his throat. "Just tell 'im, would ya?"

Granny hummed in agreement.  _"Yeah, yeah."_

But Ed didn't relax until a few hours later when Al called back to tell him that he'd made it to Resembool safely. Hearing Al chatter on was far more relieving than empty assurances.

* * *

Xing had been volatile for years, it felt like Ling had lived his whole life afraid that something terrible was going to happen. The other heirs, most of the other heirs, the older ones, they were the ones power-hungry enough to kill their half-siblings for the chance to be the Emperor's successor.

Ling didn't like any of them, well, any that he'd  _met._  Xing didn't need another power-obsessed ruler and Ling was swinging between wanting to be Emperor to make Xing better or wanting to be as far from Xing as possible.

Sometimes he found himself rubbing his fingers over the dark circular soulmark on his chest, wondering if his other half could feel it, could feel what he was feeling in that moment, could feel how relieved he was in the days after his mark had nearly faded completely at the sight of its color returned. He doubted it, but one could always hope.

Ling was still working on sensing  _chi_ , but he wasn't as good at it as Fu was, and given the state of Xing, it was something he should've been expecting.

But he still startled at the feel of something thin being drawn tight around his throat. His hands shot up immediately, clutching at where the thin wire was embedding in his throat. His eyes went wide and he couldn't force the air into his throat.

" _Young Lord!"_

There was blood trickling down his neck from where the wire had been, but the wetness against his back had to have come from Fu slicing into whoever had attacked him, but Ling still fell, clutching at his bloodied throat.

He barely saw Fu shout for an alkehestrist before he passed out.

* * *

Ed shot awake in the dorms, a scream lodged in his throat, feeling like he was eleven again and back in that white void, the Gate opening behind him, thousands of tiny black hands tugging him through.

_(Quiet child, this is what you wanted, isn't it?)_

He ran to the bathroom, but by the time he'd made it, his roiling stomach had abated. He felt feverish and his stomach ached in a way that Ed was sure had only half to do with the stitches there.

Ed's fingers fumbled with the taps, letting the water run over his mismatched fingers, feeling an odd sort of detachment as he looked down at them, interlocking the flesh fingers with the automail ones under the spray of water.

It'd cost him one arm to pull Al's soul out of the Gate…how much more would he have to give up next time if the Philosopher's Stone didn't pan out?

Ed shook himself out of those dark thoughts, cupping his hands together and splashing the water up against his face.

But when he opened his eyes, he had to blink twice, stare in incomprehension, and then abruptly lean over the toilet and vomit up what remained in his stomach, because where the black mark on his throat had once been so obvious to see, now it was just a faint outline.

Now Ed could hazard a guess as to how his soulmate had felt when he had lay bleeding out on the floor of Mustang's office, and it was so much  _worse_  than he'd imagined.

* * *

Roy was no stranger to nightmares, the Ishvalan Civil War had given him enough fuel to burn the fire of his nightmares for decades to come.

He'd killed so many, he'd  _never_  be able to wash the blood from his hands, but this time there was a new twist.

A piece of curved metal with a soul-binding array made in blood, tiny fractures splitting through it, rendering the array useless.

Long blood-stained blond hair and vacant gold eyes, blood pooling around him.

Roy bit his tongue and tasted copper as he awoke, silently and quietly, belying the fear coursing through his veins. He had never dreamed of the Elrics' deaths, it wasn't really something he had even considered. Al was an indestructible suit of armor, Ed was a reckless ill-tempered alchemy nut who had gone through multiple experiences that could've killed a weaker man. They were too stubborn together to die, but believing they were invincible was going to be the thing that killed them.

Roy rubbed his hands into his face, knowing his sleep patterns well enough to know that he wouldn't be getting back to sleep afterwards.

He checked the clock at his bedside. It said it was four fifty in the morning, which was about as lucky is he was going to get with his sleep cycle, so he just grabbed up his uniform and headed into the shower.

Roy wasn't about to call up Hawkeye -who usually drove him around- to take him to Eastern Command so early in the morning, so he'd settle for driving his own car, as terrible as he was at driving it.

Honestly, he was very impressed to find that when he reached the cafeteria it was already lit and there was someone sitting at one of the tables. The cleaning and cooking staff weren't due to show up for at least another hour, and he couldn't help but be surprised to see Edward Elric slumped over a table, his coffee cooling between his fingers.

Ed didn't even seem to notice Roy as he approached, moving past him to pour himself some coffee. It was a fresh pot, so Ed must've heated it up himself. Roy didn't think he  _liked_ coffee, let alone drank it.

"Are you awake?" Roy asked cautiously, sitting down directly across from Ed, and that made Ed blink and mentally shake himself.

"Hm?" His brow furrowed and then he scowled at Roy (his typical expression when faced with his superior officer), though his confusion was still clear to see. "Shouldn't you be sleeping, Bastard Colonel?"

Roy arched an eyebrow. "Tough talk coming from you."

Ed conceded the point with a grunt. He straightened up a bit more fully and the movement should've highlighted the mark on his neck. It was an attention grabber, black with thick lines, like it had been painted on with a brush. It was one of the first things that people noticed about Ed, apart from the golden hair and eyes, and fiery personality.

Roy knew he didn't like the attention that his mark sometimes drew and had once suggested he cover it up so it wouldn't be seen if it bothered him so much, but Ed had simply screwed up his face in annoyance and said he wasn't going to hide a mark that had been part of his life since he was one year old.

(Roy thought it best not to bring up how he preferred to hide his automail hand beneath a glove, but he was sure that it had a different meaning to Ed)

But what had drawn his eyes so much was the fact that only the barest of an outline could be seen against his neck, a sure sign that his soulmate was near-death, that his soulmate was  _dying._

It was harder when you didn't know who your other half was, but if Roy's mark was fading, he could easily call the Hughes' in Central and find out what was going on.

"Take today off," Roy told him and Ed blinked in confusion.

"What? Weren't you the one that put me on desk duty in the first place?"

"Kid," Roy sighed loudly, "your soulmark is almost faded—" Ed flinched. "—you're nearly  _white_ , which is impressive for you, you look like you're about to keel over, and you're still wearing your pajamas."

Ed looked down at himself, suddenly surprised, like he hadn't realized what he was wearing, which was a bit more concerning.

Roy took a few more sips of his coffee before leaving it to help pull Ed into a standing position, clasping an arm around his shoulders and practically steering him in the direction of the dorms. "C'mon, kid, the only thing you need is rest."

"I'm fine!" Ed was trying to insist vainly, but after watching him struggle for a solid minute trying to lift his leg to try to attempt the stairs, Roy just hooked an arm under his knees and behind his back. He grunted slightly, not expecting how heavy the automail was.

"You're heavier than you look," he told Ed, who still had enough strength to glare at him.

"Weakling," Ed muttered half-heartedly, his eyes sliding shut.

" _Brat,"_  Roy retorted, heaving the kid up the stairs. He'd always made jokes about Ed's short stature but he didn't think he'd ever really appreciated just how small he was, and holding him in his arms, that fact had never been made more obvious.

Ed ignored him, his cheek smushed against the breast of Roy's uniform, his breathing evening out as he slipped from consciousness at long last.

It there was one thing that kid definitely needed, it was sleep. Roy would let him off just this once (He'd let him off every time).

He opened the door to Ed's room -majors and up had the opportunity to have their own room, though you could room out of the dorms once you hit first lieutenant, which was why Havoc and Breda still slept in the dorms while Hawkeye had her own apartment- with a bit of difficulty, making Ed's head loll against his chest, but finally Roy had made it into the room.

It was pretty orderly for belonging to an almost-thirteen-year-old, but Ed could fit his and Al's possessions into a single briefcase, so he probably didn't have much to create a mess with.

Lowering a half-metal sleeping kid onto his bed took a lot more effort than Roy would've thought and he was reminded of a time when he'd gone to see Hughes and Gracia after Elicia started sleeping through the night and the same kind of diligence he was using with Ed, Hughes had displayed when putting his daughter down to sleep.

Roy didn't want to think about what that meant.

He just set Ed down carefully and pulled his blankets up. "Get some sleep, kid," he muttered quietly in the silence.

He  _definitely_  needed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, there's probably going to be one more chapter before we skip a year forward, but I think that's the longest skip you'll see in this fic, but who knows. Ling's got a scene or two more before the time skip and I'm still debating a lot of changes to canon, apart from the gay and the parental fluff :)


	9. Hurtful Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love how everyone is down for the Xerxians being dark-skinned and for Ed and Ling to meet as soon as possible (who isn't at this point?)
> 
> Denial might be a river in Egypt, but Roy swims in it every day.

Ling came to hazily. It was dark around him, just a few lanterns alight. The shades were pulled to give the allusions of night, but Ling couldn't be completely sure if it  _actually_  was night, it was impossible to tell.

He blinked twice more to clear his vision a bit, eyes shifting to the side to see Lanfan maintaining a silent vigil at his side.

Relief poured out of her entire being. "Young lord," she breathed, her shoulders sagging as she leaned closer. Even in the darkness she looked paler than usual, dark eyes watching him carefully.

Ling tried to remember what happened. He swallowed and it felt like his throat had something pulled tight around it and a startling fear flared up inside him, the memory flooding back, of the thin cord cutting into the soft flesh of his throat, the blood dripping from the wound.

He tried to claw his neck free of whatever was wrapped there, but Lanfan was quick to grab his hands. "Its just a bandage," she assured him, squeezing his wrists in a way that she clearly hoped was comforting. "The alkahestrists stitched you back together, but they wanted to make sure the skin was protected…you can take it off in a few days, okay?"

Ling probed the bandage around his throat with a cautious hand, feeling the thin material against his skin. His neck throbbed underneath it.

He opened his mouth, intending to speak, but Lanfan stalled him. "Its probably best that you not speak yet, Young lord. Let your throat heal."

Ling swallowed thickly, his eyes flicking towards hers.

"I'll stay," Lanfan promised and Ling settled back down onto the bed, relaxing against the cushions, trying not to think too hard about what had happened. He made a gesture with his hand that she took to mean that he wanted her to tell him what had happened after he'd passed out. "You were lucky, Young lord, that the alkahestrists are such good healers, a few moments longer and…" It was better to leave that unsaid. Lanfan cleared her throat and seemed to shake herself out of her own dark thoughts. "Grandfather dispatched your would-be-assassin before questioning him about whose orders he was following."

Ling bit the inside of his cheek. It was a tossup. Either it was the Emperor or it was one of his siblings…they would be the only ones that would care enough to assassinate him. Honestly, the heirs that were the safest in Xing were the ones with the least standing, like the Changs and the Wus. They weren't in any real position of power, being from the poorest regions in Xing.

Of all of the Emperors children, the most likely options apart from himself were the heirs of the Jiang, Ji, Ying, Si, Yun, Gui, and Ren clans. Xing Ying was the one vying for successor as the Emperor's first born son -and how  _pretentious_  did the Ying clan have to be to name their heir after their literal  _country?-_  and there were rumors that he had personally killed Yun Song, the Emperor's first born daughter. To be honest, Ling wouldn't have put it past him. Xing was older and crueler than most of Ling's half-siblings, and Ling had met Yun Song once, and though he didn't like to compliment his siblings much, Yun Song was honestly lovely and sweet and her singing had been beautiful.

Her funeral had been just as beautiful.

"The Qing heir has died."

Ling blinked. He'd barely known Tai Qing's name, but he wasn't of very high importance amongst the heirs and heiresses still living; his death was surprising.

What was the tally at now? Twenty-two sons and fifteen daughters? Was the Emperor hoping they'd all pick each other off until there was only one left? It wouldn't have surprised Ling all that much to find that out, if he was being perfectly honest.

His father was a rotten  _bastard._

Ling shut his eyes, trying to focus on Lanfan's chi. That was something easy to focus on, its fluctuating presence at his side easy to pinpoint.

He reached out a hand. Ling had always been a rather tactile person…probably making up for the lack of touch his mother had given him due to her sudden and unexplainable death, but he couldn't help but breathe easier when Lanfan's hand slid into his, warm and firm, giving his a squeeze.

* * *

Al had spent a lot of time in the Rockbells' basement. Time wasn't something he could really gauge very well now that his body was made of metal. Ed made it easier. He knew when it was too late or too early -at least, for him-, but sometimes he forced himself to stay awake, working on his research deep into the night and onto the next morning. His brother was an idiot like that sometimes. Al wanted to get their (emphasis on  _their_  because Ed so often liked to forget that he'd suffered a loss as well because all he saw when he looked at Al's metal body was a cage he'd forced his brother into) bodies back as much as Ed, but, luckily for him, he didn't have an off-switch like Ed did. Al could keep going long after Ed had fallen asleep.

Often Ed would just pass out in Al's lap while he read on by the light of lanterns, because he knew that it helped Al to feel the weight of his brother against him. Al couldn't feel the warmth of his touch or the texture of his coat…when Al was younger he'd always clung to the back of Ed's shirt, and he still didn't like it, how things were.

"I'm tired, Brother," he'd confided one night. "I just want to sleep again, smell flowers, feel the  _sun…"_

Ed's shoulders had shook violently then. "I know," his voice had broken halfway.

But it was still new for both of them, having a support system in the Amestrian military. Ed could feign dislike of Musang all he wanted, but Al had seen the change, the spark of determination within his brother after their first meeting. Neither of them would've been where they were now without him. Mustang was the man that Ed could walk easily beside, step for step, that Ed didn't talk complete circles around in regards to alchemy. Hanging out at the office between missions wasn't nearly as much of a chore as Ed and Al both thought it would be and even though Al could often hear Ed and Mustang yelling at each other from inside Mustang's office, Havoc and Breda would be making jokes and treating Al like the kid he actually was.

Al wasn't really used to it, being treated like a kid…but he hadn't had a body to reflect his physical age in almost two years. People looked at the suit of armor and found him imposing, but Mustang's men looked at him and saw a kid; they'd never know just how  _much_  he appreciated it.

Ed threw himself into research so hard that Al's efforts seemed to pale in comparison. He knew he shouldn't feel like that, but he did. Ed was always working himself to the bone, and what was Al doing?

That was why Al was even in Resembool in the first place. There had to be something there, in the boxes, in the books… _something_  that could help them.

But Al kept getting distracted by the other things that he'd thrown in the boxes with the books. There were so many pictures he hadn't realized he'd added. It was like walking back into the past. Most of the pictures were of him and Ed. Mom had always had a camera on hand, she'd wanted to capture everything for when Dad came back. There were a good few with them and her, but as Al looked through he found none of Dad.

Thinking of Dad always made Ed snap and snarl and rage, and, honestly, Al couldn't blame him for that. Al didn't think he even really liked Dad anymore, mostly he was disappointed. He didn't know what he'd do if one day he'd see him -though he was absolutely certain that Ed would clock him in the face or try to murder him, which one he went with would depend on his mood before seeing their father- and he didn't think he actually wanted to see him.

It was hard for him to admit that, but he'd been four when Van Hohenheim had left without a look back. Al hadn't seen his father or heard from him in almost eight years. If he'd  _cared_ , he would've stayed in contact.

Al looked at one of the pictures, of him and Ed arm-in-arm, beaming smiles on their faces, and then he pocketed it before finally moving onto the books.

There were a lot of them…this was going to take a while.

* * *

Ed awoke again at midday, feeling marginally better rested than the first time.

He blinked his eyes open blearily, staring at the ceiling, his fingers tracing over the mark that had been almost faded earlier. Ed didn't know if that was still the case but he was almost afraid to find out.

His soulmate had never been much of a priority for him, not with Al the way he was, but Ed had grown up with that mark on his throat. He didn't want to think about what it would be like to live in a world where he didn't have its constant presence.

Ed pressed a hand to his sweaty brow before pinching the bridge of his nose. It was easier when Al was with him, even if Ed never told his brother completely what was on his mind, his presence did a lot to ease the terrors of his mind.

A sudden fear gripped him. What if something had happened sometime between when Al had called him last and now? What  _if—?_

Mustang would say that was just his mind blowing things out of proportion…though, knowing him, he'd throw in a good joke about Ed's proportions being on the short side. Even the Mustang inside his head was an  _ass_ , but it was good to know that some things didn't change.

Ed dragged himself out of bed and cautiously into the bathroom, preparing for the worst when he flicked on the light and stood in front of the mirror.

His legs felt like noodles. The mark was still there, and not as light as it had been before…that was a relief. It was a light grey, but Ed would take that over almost unseen.

Ed threw himself into the shower and pulled some clothes on -not his military uniform,  _obviously_ , Ed hated that thing and Mustang had told him to take the day off, right?- before checking the clock at his bedside. It was midday, so that had to mean that most of Mustang's men were at lunch, but Mustang didn't really go to the cafeteria all that much, even during lunch. The man might've been a slacker but he always seemed to work through lunch, like the cafeteria was the last place he wanted to be.

Ed didn't know why. The food wasn't too bad, and today and smelled like they were cooking something good.

He walked down the bare hallway to Mustang's office, opening the first door quietly, peering inside and seeing that all his subordinates had gone, continued on to the door to Mustang's inner office. His hand tightened into a fist, like he was ready to raise it to knock, but knocking had never been Ed's style.

Ed threw open the door in time to see Mustang's face go bloodless and his whole body lurching towards the waste bin, his breakfast abruptly leaving his stomach.

Ed couldn't help but be startled. He didn't think he'd ever seen Mustang ill in any capacity, but he couldn't help but remember one time when Fuery had decided to grab everyone lunch and Hawkeye had given him Mustang's order as well as her own.

"Absolutely no meat, Master-Sergeant," Hawkeye had said, "you know how the Colonel gets about cooked meat."

He stepped forward a bit cautiously as Mustang mopped his brow with his sleeve and Mustang looked up sharply when Ed extended a tissue to him carefully, crouching down slightly so that their heads were level.

Mustang took the tissue gratefully, settling onto the floor next to his desk and making a gesture for Ed to do the same, so Ed found himself with his back to the side of Mustang's desk, not saying anything to the man, just sitting beside him.

Ed didn't think he'd ever sat so close to Hohenheim, even back when he hadn't hated the very idea of him. Hohenheim never seemed to really know what to do with him or Al, either that, or something about them scared him. He always kept them at a distance and whenever he creaked Ed's bedroom door open to peer inside, Ed always pretended to be asleep…but Hohenheim never did anything and a minute later his door had been firmly shut. Ed had found that unnerving.

But here he sat next to Roy Mustang, their arms almost touching as he wiped at his mouth with the tissue.

"Cooking meat," Mustang said finally, tiredly, "smells a great deal like cooking flesh."

" _Oh."_  Ed thought about waking up from nightmares, of that  _thing_  he and Al had made, and Ed had never been in a war before. "Was…was Ishval bad?"

Mustang made a quiet huffing sound. " _Worse,"_  he said hollowly, scrubbing his hands against his face.

Everyone dealt with trauma in different ways, Ed knew that well enough. Maybe the reason Mustang slept so much at the office was because he couldn't get any sleep at home. Maybe the reason he couldn't stomach cooked meat was because he had burned too many bodies to corpses.

Ed didn't like to think about that sort of thing. To him, Mustang was just his superior officer, the person that had forced meaning back into his life after they'd attempted Human Transmutation. He was a dork that thought he was suave and he always cowered at Hawkeye's quirked eyebrow. In Ed's mind he wasn't the Hero of Ishval, a man that had killed hundreds with the snap of his fingers, but he couldn't deny Mustang's past or even his own.

And Ed knew enough about trauma to know that sometimes the best thing was to remove the person from that harmful stimuli.

"Did you—" Ed faltered. He wasn't good at the whole being attentive and understanding thing. "Did you want to get something out for lunch?"

Mustang paused in his surprise, dark eyes flicking towards Ed's bright ones in surprise. It was the kind of kindness he'd've expected from Al, not Ed who was more prone to put his foot in his mouth than anything else.

"You like Xingese?" Mustang asked finally.

"Who doesn't like Xingese?" Ed scoffed, pushing himself up into a standing position and then debating offering a hand to Mustang, but then he was already standing, so Ed felt less awkward about it.

Ed waited in the outer office while Mustang cleaned out his waste bin, swinging his legs against the side of Falman's desk (his metal foot might've left a dent, but he wasn't going to be the one to tell Falman that).

Ed's stomach gave a rather loud gurgle of protest at Ed waiting so long to dump food into it.

"When was the last time you even ate, Fullmetal?" Mustang snorted and Ed couldn't help but scowl.

"I skipped breakfast." He'd been dead to the world for most of the morning. He wasn't in any position to get up and grab himself something to eat. Ed hopped off the desk and he could practically see a height joke forming somewhere behind Mustang's eyes. "Don't say it, don't you _fucking_  say it, Mustang, or I'm kicking your ass  _so hard—"_

"Was that a long drop for you?"

"I SWEAR  _TO—"_  Ed's rage echoed off the walls combined with Mustang's laughter and it did nothing to improve his mood, though he would never admit it was more relieving to hear Mustang's laughter than to see him turn positively white at the smell of cooking meat.

* * *

Al didn't think he'd ever appreciated just how many books his father had on alchemy.  _Obviously,_ they'd read some of them when they were first getting into alchemy, but he had to have every book on the subject, even obscure ones that went out of print centuries ago…the more he read, the less he felt he knew.

Al was smart, it wasn't arrogant for him to say that if it was true. True, Ed's technique was a bit more refined than Al's, but they were on the same level. Even if Ed got to the conclusion first, it didn't take much for Al to understand it. That was one of the good things about learning Xingese. It had been so simple to them, the symbols and how the words flowed easily off their tongues.

Mom had always been rather excited about when they did things easily, but it wasn't something that Dad seemed to notice all that much, and then he was gone.

Ed had been quieter, then. Al wasn't sure why Dad leaving really made Ed come out of his shell, but he remembered Ed being nervous and quiet whenever Dad got too close. Al didn't think Dad had ever hit Ed, but something about him had put Ed on edge and once he'd gone that unease had morphed into anger.

A folded up piece of paper fell out of the book he was flipping through and Al creased it open, holding it up to the light.

_Its difficult for me to look at them, knowing they came from something so dark, so evil. They'll never be clean of me. I look at them and I see my Xerxian line continued, I see the golden hair and eyes, the skin that absorbs the sun best, I see potential for greatness. But those are thoughts of the man I once was, the man who grew from a slave without a name to a revered alchemist._

_Nothing good has ever come from me, not even my love for Trisha, not even my boys are spared of that. And one day they'll have to understand that what I've done has been to keep them safe, despite what I am, despite what they are._

Then it trailed off into some alchemical notations and Al couldn't help but feel hollow, more hollow than he already was. He didn't know what to make of the words scrawled there…the idea that they were actually Xerxian was intriguing, the fact that their father had once been a slave was startling (was that even  _legal?),_  the fact that he thought nothing good would come from him, not even his own sons…it hurt Al, somewhere deep inside, where his heart should've been.

Fathers weren't  _supposed_  to say that.

Mustang was kinder than that, Al was surprised to note. He wasn't used to recognizing that, or comparing the two, but Mustang was the one that had given them purpose and way to reach their goal, the one that lectured them when they messed up. Al couldn't remember Van Hohenheim being very involved with their childhood, but Mustang had fallen asleep in Ed's hospital room when he was recovering from the assassination attempt, he patted Al's arm in a comforting gesture and let him speak plainly about things that bothered him.

Ed said "The Colonel Bastard is gonna be  _pissed"_  in the same kind of way someone might say "My dad is gonna _kill_  me!"

Al wouldn't mind it, he realized, calling Mustang 'Dad', and the thought couldn't help but make him feel warm inside, even though there was nothing there. Al would have to settle for figurative warmth until he could actually feel it, but he would, one day, he was sure of it.

* * *

Roy Mustang lost ten years off his life when he stepped into his office one morning, precisely two weeks from the day Ed nearly had an apoplectic fit at his little brother taking a train to Resembool without telling him until the train was leaving.

He wasn't expecting it when he heard a "Colonel Mustang?"

Roy startled terribly with a loud "For the love of— _Al?"_  The folders hit the ground, papers sliding against the floor.

"Sir?" Hawkeye was at the doorway instantly, her gun cocked only to realize what was going on. "…would you like me to shut the door, sir?"

Roy sighed, rubbing the back of his head, he could just feel the embarrassed flush working its way up his neck. "That would be helpful, yes, thank you, Lieutenant."

Her mouth twitched as she shut the door and Al stepped forward cautiously. "Sorry," he said sheepishly as Roy collected the papers into the right folders. "Lieutenant Hawkeye suggested I just wait in your office to talk with you…I didn't mean to startle you."

Al sounded a bit too regretful and Roy frowned curiously. "Ed doesn't like people sneaking up on him, either," Al explained and Roy's mouth formed an 'o' of understanding. Sometimes it seemed like the kid was just twitchy, but Roy could sympathize with not wanting anyone sneaking up on you…especially if that was how he'd almost been killed.

"When did you get in?" Roy asked instead, settling his chair and gesturing to Al to sit opposite him. "I don't think Ed's even awake yet, did you want me to—?"

"Oh,  _no!"_  Al said quickly, feverishly, waving his hands. "I wanted to talk to you first."

Roy arched an eyebrow. That was odd. If it was Ed, he would've shoved Roy out of the way to get to his brother.

Al held out a creased piece of paper to Roy without an explanation and he took it, unfolding it and reading its contents slowly and carefully once…and then again because he must've read something wrong. "Is…is this written by your father?" Roy asked finally, his tone just a touch bleak.

Al's armor creaked as he nodded.

Honestly, Roy couldn't imagine anyone could look at their children and think they weren't capable of good because of where they'd come from.

"I think Ed won't take it very well," Al heaved a sigh, his words heavy and ringing with exhaustion despite it being something beyond him, "or he'll pretend like it doesn't affect him…but no one wants to think their dad didn't want them."

Roy's whole expression softened. He'd once heard Ed tell Al loudly "Al, you're a goddamn treasure" and Roy knew the boy well enough to know that there was no one who possessed more love and kindness than Alphonse Elric.

"Did you want me to tell him?" Roy asked quietly,  _gently._

They could both hear his loud voice as he entered the outer office, complaining about something to do with Havoc, probably related to his smoking habits.

"Would you?" Al had never sounded so honestly relieved, turning his helmet towards the door, listening intently. "How has brother been? He wouldn't really say on the phone…"

That was so like him, not to talk about himself.

"Its mostly been smooth sailing, well, for  _his_  level of chaos, I suppose," Roy had to concede, "there was one incident the day after you left, though, that was when his soulmark was almost faded."

Al jolted in his seat, startled. "It  _was?"_

"Don't worry," Roy assured him quickly. "The color's returned, so they might've been in an accident and were in the hospital like Ed was…and after today he'll be cleared for field work again, so things will quiet down a bit."

Al laughed, which caused the door to shoot open with a delighted  _"Al!"_

The suit of armor stood up in time for a boy clothed in the blue Amestrian uniform collide with his chest plate, knocking him to the ground.

"Oof," Al said despite feeling nothing, watching as his brother sat up, patting carefully over the metal, looking for any indication that Al wasn't in the same condition he'd been when he'd left. "I'm all right, Brother, really."

Ed glowered doubtfully.

"You  _idiot,_  Al! Running off on your own, what were you  _thinking?"_

Roy thought it best not to point out the amount of mothering Ed was displaying in regards to his little brother, or the level of hypocrisy.

"I thought I'd be like you for a change, Brother," Al said innocently enough that Roy found himself howling with laughter while Ed glared at him, his cheeks flooding with color.

"Fullmetal, why don't you get off Al?" Roy suggested. "I need to speak with you privately."

That made Ed's brow furrow in confusion and he looked to Al briefly, though his brother offered no help, forcing Ed to clamor off Al to allow him to leave quietly.

"If this is about keeping me off field work for another week—" Ed nearly growled, but Roy held up a hand to stall his words.

"It isn't," he promised, leaning against the side of his desk and holding out the paper Al had given him. "Al found this when he was researching…he wasn't sure how you'd react to it."

Ed's expression warped into befuddlement as he took it from Roy, his gaze sharpening and his teeth gritting when he recognized the handwriting. Roy could see precisely when he'd reached the part where nothing good came from Van Hohenheim, not even his children, because Ed's teeth sank down into his lip and he took in a deep shuddering breath.

Then he handed the paper back to Roy.

"Are you all right?" Roy asked him cautiously.

"He was a bastard before, now he's just a bastard that probably shouldn't've had kids, what's the difference?" Ed snapped.

He looked like he was fraying at the edges, like he was a bunch of wires that were short-circuiting.

Roy stood up and did probably something he should've done earlier but had been to stubborn to: he reached out and pulled Ed into a hug.

For a moment Ed just hung there, his face pressed against Roy's military jacket, but then he raised his hands and -surprising Roy more than he'd like to admit- balled them into the material at his back, his shoulders shaking.

Roy kept one arm secure around his shoulders, his  _small_ and _young_  shoulders, the other running through Ed's hair in what he hoped was a comforting gesture.

He wasn't sure how long they stayed like that, but somehow Roy knew that if Al had had his body, he'd be in a worse state.

At long last, Ed pulled himself back, hiccupping slightly, rubbing furiously at his red eyes. Roy was going to pretend that there wasn't a damp spot on the jacket where his face had been. Ed was a very quiet crier. Roy wondered if that was a habit he'd learned as a child or something he'd picked up.

"You and Al are great kids," Roy told him seriously and Ed gave a doubtful expression, sniffling faintly. "Maybe a bit rough around the edges for you, but everyone's got flaws. You do, I do, Hawkeye does, the Fuhrer does… _no one's_  perfect, not even parents…but we can't be blamed for things outside of our control, like who our fathers are. And one day you both are going to completely outclass him, you know that? What's he going to be able to say when you hand him on his ass?"

That made Ed laugh, which was more than enough, and in the coming weeks Roy Mustang would find that Al had left a picture in one of his drawers, one of two boys with glowing grins to match their bright eyes, arm and arm. None of his subordinates commented on the sight of the new photograph on his desk, even if it amused them, and it certainly did.

Ed flushed in embarrassment the first time he saw it, but the exasperated smile he bore and the tiny giggles emanating from Al's helmet made it worth it.

* * *

"I hear the Elric Brothers are looking into Xerxes."

"Is that so?" A single eye sharpened. "Well, we'll have to do something about that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of part one! I'm still iffy on how much of canon I want to keep, but I'm pretty sure Hohenheim's origin story is staying the same, just everything with the homunculi I'm less sure on…Ling and Ed might meet in the next chapter! We're doing a time skip a year forward, and they'll be meeting early into part two ;)


	10. Endurance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The continuous love this fic really warms my heart! At his core, Hohenheim isn't a bad man, he's a very sad and tragic man (with a very different past), but he had so many fears about being a father that it led to him being inadequate. He loves his sons…he just doesn't know how to be fatherly in any capacity. Worry not, all shall be explained about him eventually.
> 
> There weren't any updates for a little while because I needed to figure out the direction this fic is going and I rewrote this chapter eight times *sobs* now I know: this is going so AU that barely any canon is remaining. Hohenheim's past is a bit different and more closely tied to Father, Xerxes is hugely important, and a lot of stuff is going down in Xing, that's probably all I can say about it right now.

Roy didn't usually have to worry about the Elrics, which was equal parts amusing as it was sad. Now at thirteen and fourteen they were making waves and it seemed like every other week Ed and Al were stomping into his office, Ed delivering a half-assed report, Al greeting all his subordinates.

Things hadn't really changed since that day more than a year ago when Ed had clung to Roy had sobbed into his chest, he was still as volatile as ever, always prone to shouting, but he cooled down faster and he smiled a bit more. He smiled when Hawkeye patted his head and then had Al lean down so she could do the same to him (Roy still remembered Ed saying he didn't like the other soldiers touching his hair, but he never seemed to mind Roy's men, that warmed his chest), laughed when Breda and Havoc pulled him into an argument, and sniggered when Fuery quailed under Hawkeye's eye while tripping Falman in an effort to get him to loosen up.

("Do you and Lieutenant Hawkeye ever argue?" Al asked him once.

"Not often," Roy considered.

"Why not?"

"She gets the kids in the divorce," Roy lamented and Al had burst into tittering giggles, even though Roy still wasn't sure if he was talking about his men or Ed and Al.)

Roy had once caught Ed slip up when he was reading a book in the cafeteria and someone asked him where his dad was and Ed had responded "probably in his office" followed five seconds later by "WHAT THE  _FUCK!"_

("Do you miss sleeping?" Roy asked Al.

"Every night," Al said. "Do you miss sleeping through the night?"

Roy hated how old he sounded when he spoke, old beyond his years, Al deserved to be a kid for as long as possible. "Sometimes," he heaved a heavy sigh, "but I've given up the right to wish for that anymore.")

Things were good, now,  _better._  Some days Ed came back into the office with a black eye, or his arm in a sling, or a bandage around his head, but hardly ever without a wild grin that was unapologetic. One day he came in annoyed and with his coat ripped "Another ninja tried to kill me," he complained like it was at most an inconvenience for him, rather unlike the last time, when he'd almost died.

(There were days where Ed looked at his brother with so much misery and self-loathing that Roy didn't know how he could bear it.)

There was still a healing scratch on Ed's cheek as he slumped into the couch in Roy's office, his head tilted slightly as if listening for something, or giving off the air of not listening to Roy, which was always a possibility.

"I've got another mission for you," Roy said and Ed groaned loudly.

" _C'mon_ , Colonel Bastard," Ed complained, sinking even lower into the couch, his legs straightening and his chin hitting his chest. "You've been giving us mission after  _mission_ , when are Al and I gonna have any time to do our research?"

Roy could understand his frustration. Listening to Al list the things that he missed about his real body -being able to _sleep_ , being able to  _eat_ , being able to feel the  _warmth of the sun_ \- tugged at his heartstrings, but it must've been far worse for Ed. But Ed was right, they had been doing mission after mission after mission lately. And they were missions from above Roy, so he couldn't exactly refuse them for Ed.

"Sorry, kid, orders from above."

Ed's scowl was more like a pout. "What is it?"

"A lot of children in East City and a few in the other cities have gone missing in the past few months, we think there's a large child trafficking ring located in the city," Roy explained, extending a thick file to Ed who scowled even further and didn't bother getting up so his brother heaved a heavy sigh, standing himself to grasp it. At least one of them was mature. "We have a lot of individual information on them, but we haven't been able to catch them yet."

"So…you want me to find them and kick their asses?"

Roy sighed. Ah,  _Ed_ , he was so eloquent about committing violence.

"I want you to find them and  _gather intel,_  try to keep your head down  _just a little_ , won't you, Fullmetal?"

Ed bristled before huffing and twisting his head away from Roy so he wouldn't have to look at him.

"I'll look after him, sir," Al promised, seeming almost cheerful.

Ed made a grunting noise in the back of his throat, pulling himself off the couch before he ended up on the floor. "Yeah, yeah, keep my head down."

"You're easily the most expensive endeavor the military has ever taken on," Roy called over to him as he traipsed out the way he'd come in.

"Love ya too, Colonel Bastard!" Ed fired off behind him and Roy buried his face into his hands and wondered what on earth he'd done to deserve this.

"Don't worry, sir," Al informed him in the same cheerful manner, "I'll make sure Ed doesn't destroy too many buildings."

"Thanks, Al," was muffled behind Roy's hands, before saying to Hawkeye when they'd both gone, "These boys are going to  _kill_  me, Lieutenant."

"Don't worry, sir, I'll avenge your death."

That didn't really help.

* * *

The atmosphere in Xing always seemed so tense, like a powder keg waiting to explode. In the past year the Jin, Mao, Pan, Shen, and even the Yun heiress had either had a convenient accident or been outright assassinated, but it was getting harder to tell, the assassins were  _ever crafty._  Now there were only nineteen sons and twelve daughters remaining.

Ling had dodged three more assassination attempts since the attempted garroting that had left him with a thin but obvious scar across his throat. His voice remained the same for the most part, but if he tried to lower it too much it became a bit gruff and prone to breaking. So far there'd only been one attempted kidnapping, which was surprising.

Not because it happened but why it happened. Usually when heirs were kidnapped it was to ransom their rich parents, but Ling's mother was long dead and the Emperor never cared that his children lived or died, his children had been assassinated left and right for years, he would never give in to ransom demands.

But clans would.

Clan heirs were the literal lifeblood of the respective clans. Each clan that had lost an heir over the past few years had immediately lost all their political standing. If your clan heir ended up as the Emperor, the power of the clan, the wealth of the clan, the social standing of the clan went  _through the roof._  That was why Lifen Yun's death was such a big deal. She was the heiress of one of the most influential and powerful clans, like the Yao clan, and after her death, they were scrambling, they needed to attain power somehow.

The Yao clan had been of higher standing than the Yun clan to start with, so them attacking was expected and planned for.

Ling and Lanfan looked enough alike that someone unfamiliar with both of them would make the careless mistake of not being able to tell the difference between the two. Ling hadn't quite hit his growth spurt yet so they were practically the same height. Lanfan could tie her hair lower, shift her bangs across her face, bind her breasts and dress in the cheongsam he wore under the yellow jacket with the Yao clan's symbol on the back, and no one would be any the wiser. She could very well be Ling Yao.

Unfortunately, and  _unsurprisingly_ , Ling wasn't a fan of the plan, but they weren't expecting him to be. Bodyguards acted as protective measures, they were there to keep their charges safe. He and Lanfan might be friends, might've grown up together, but she was also there to keep him safe and alive, that was her job, that was her  _duty._

And, as expected, they struck.

Lanfan could've evaded it entirely, but that wasn't the point. The point was to get  _caught,_  the point was to make them  _think_ they'd succeeded.

So Lanfan collapsed to the ground, the world going black around her.

* * *

Roy had set the Elrics loose and had almost been expecting to hear something about them blowing up a building by 'accident' or men ending up in the hospital complaining of a golden-haired demon and a menacing suit of armor ( _hah!),_  and those were generally  _very frequent_  with them. But this time it was surprisingly quiet. Honestly, Roy hadn't been expecting it. He didn't know if he was more impressed or proud when Ed finally delivered a week after being assigned the mission.

It was a massive operation and with all the sectors of the military and the police collaborating, they'd managed to take it down, based off Ed's intel. Roy was mostly surprised that he'd managed to limit the amount of ass-kicking.

The Fuhrer himself had come to congratulate Roy on his subordinate's actions, smiling in that fatherly way that he did and telling him that Ed was up for consideration for the next rank up from Major, which was Lieutenant Colonel -the rank Hughes had only just recently attained. That itself was so startling, because Ed was only fourteen, and he definitely wouldn't be happy about moving up in the ranks, even if it added to his pay. The military was a temporary stopover for him until he figured out a way to get Al's body back.

Roy didn't want to be the one to bring it up to Ed, given that he would probably respond very  _explosively._

However, he wasn't expecting a very worried Al to wander into his office and ask him if he'd seen Ed recently.

It was like an echo of the time when Ed had been kidnapped by Barry the Chopper.

"When was the last time you saw him?" Roy asked.

"He said he was going to look into the last truck that left East City from the child traffickers," Al explained, "he thought it was heading across the Eastern Desert to restart the operation in Xing instead."

It wasn't a bad thought. The reason Amestris could've easily demolished the trafficking ring was because they had an organized force -there might be things Roy didn't like about the military, mostly Ishval related, but he couldn't deny that the organization of the military made them more effective- and, as far as Roy knew, Xing didn't have the same. It would be a very big problem for Xing if a trafficking ring set up there.

Ed liked to claim that he only cared about one thing, Al, but Roy knew that wasn't right. He'd watched him speak gently, softly with a small Ishvalan child that had been recovered with the rest of the children. He cared more than he liked to admit, and that was so like him, to go off on his own and try to stop the bad guys on his own.

But sometimes Ed needed some backup, even if he didn't want it, even if he was too fast for them to keep up to, even if it was dangerous.

"We'll find him," Roy promised, leaning up on the tips of his toes in an attempt to pat the top of Al's helmet, an action that both boys reacted positively to. "I mean, how far into the Eastern Desert could he get before snapping at them and concussing them?"

Al couldn't help but laugh.

* * *

It took two weeks to cross the Eastern Desert on foot, but it took significantly less when you were on a horse, or in a cart that was attached to a horse, then it took about a week. Lanfan wasn't even sure how far into that week she was, just that she was sure it had been going on a while.

She'd been stuck in the arm several times with a sedative, so it had to have been several days at least. The last one was starting to wear off, so she grabbing as much awareness as she could.

The cart she'd been thrown in was covered, which was probably how they'd managed to get out of Xing so easily. No one really checked covered carts that rolled behind horses, so often carrying crafts to trade. There was a crate or two of Xingese embroidered silk in the back with her, that seemed to be mostly for show.

Her eyes flicked down to her wrists as they twinged, cramped after days in the position. It was a good thing they'd put her in rope instead of chains, they were noisy and rattled far more, making escape a bit  _louder._  Even Ling would've been able to get out of the rope, but most people didn't know that Ling had been trained by Fu, most people didn't know that he was incredibly proficient with his dao, most people didn't know that he could sense chi as well as anyone who could read the flow of the Dragon's Pulse. Ling wasn't some weak-willed prince, though there were certainly those type amongst the Emperor's children, but the assumption was very helpful.

Lanfan lay very still, listening intently and feeling the flow of chi around her.

There were the two men in the front, then there was three approaching from the other direction, and one of the chi she sensed…she didn't know quite how to describe it other than warm, like the sun. It was very  _strange._

She drew her hands close to her chest, one finger digging between the buttons of the cheongsam to brush against her chest bindings, digging past it to the small kunai she had hidden there before the kidnapping.

Lanfan had to still suddenly, just when she'd barely managed to grasp the kunai, her eyes sliding shut when one of her captors looked back to her before complaining to his fellow about their job and how bad it would be if the people approaching caught them with 'the Yao brat'.

She bristled at the derogatory tone in which that was said, her temper flaring up. Ling didn't deserve that. She pulled the kunai completely out and the ropes that bound her fell to the ground as she stood, the blade still clutched in her hand.

They only realized what was happening a moment too late.

There was a flash of blood and a struggle -Lanfan was sure that she'd felt something painful snap in her arm- and a moment later the horses came to a halt just as the truck -why on earth anyone thought taking an Amestrian vehicle into the Eastern Desert was a good idea, Lanfan would never know- came to a screeching stop in front of the cart, skidding and ultimately rolling a few too many times.

Lanfan pulled the bodies out of the front of the cart, tossing them onto the ground, looking over to the rolled truck, quacking with the sounds of a beating from within. She stared as an unconscious man was thrown from within, shortly followed by a second, before a third stomped out, swearing loudly.

Lanfan stared some more, surprise dawning across her face, because it was a boy about her age, skin bronzed as if blessed by the sun, with long blond hair tumbling out of its braid and eyes like gold, and on the side of his throat was the Xingese symbol for sun, the  _exact_  size and shape of the one on Ling's chest.

It probably wasn't polite to stare, but Lanfan couldn't help herself in this moment.

This was the soulmate of the young lord and she'd just witnessed him  _literally_  kick his way out of a crashed truck. There was a gash on his thigh and another on his arm and it was probably likely that in a few hours his face was going to be incredibly bruised.

His eyes fixed on hers and they both sized each other. Lanfan took note of the collapsed but still breathing bodies at his feet, he took into account the corpses at her side. Both of them nodded approvingly.

" _You from Xing?"_  he asked in flawless Xingese and Lanfan reeled in her shock.

" _Kidnapped,"_  she offered helpfully and his expression soured before he clapped his hands together and pressed them into the sand.

Lanfan's jaw unhinged as she watched the sand crackle with electricity next to his hands before forming into rope that easily tied up the two unconscious men. Amestrian Alchemy wasn't the same as Xingese Alkahestry, Lanfan knew that, sure, they were pretty similar, but they were still rather different. But, Lanfan knew enough to know that alchemy and alkahestry couldn't be performed without an array, yet he'd done so.

" _Amestris is only a few hours that way,"_  the boy said, jerking his thumb in the direction he'd come in.  _"You can probably call home from there and let them know you're all right…I think Xing is several days ride away."_

Lanfan grimaced, twisting to look behind her into the distance where she knew her country lied beyond how far she could see. She almost wanted to stubbornly turnaround and head back in the direction she had come, but then her stomach had rumbled.

She felt like Ling, always  _starving_  for some food but Lanfan wasn't sure how much food she'd managed to eat in the past week, it was kind of a blur.

"What's your name?" she asked instead, switching to Amestrian.

"Edward Elric," he said, finally putting a name to the face of Ling Yao's soulmate.

"Lanfan," she return, wincing and looking down at her arm and he seemed to finally take notice of his own injuries.

In a short matter of minutes, Lanfan's arm was splinted and looped into a makeshift sling while Edward's cuts were bandaged tightly.

He looked over to the crashed truck that he'd probably played more than a hand in causing with a grimace. "Don't suppose you'd give me a ride back to East City to drop these assclowns in jail, would you?"

His words startled a laugh out of Lanfan and then she found herself quite unable to stop.

"No," she finally managed to force out, "not at all."

* * *

They'd been traveling together a little over an hour, Edward –" _Ed_ ," he'd told her with another scowl, "no one calls me Edward unless they're annoyed with me,  _usually_ "– had told her a few things about himself. He was a State Alchemist in Amestris known by the title of Fullmetal Alchemist, he'd joined the Amestrian Military when he was twelve for his brother but he never explained that further, two of his limbs were automail prosthetics -which explained why the heat was affecting him so much that he appeared almost feverish, slapping a water-soaked rag over his shoulder and his thigh in an attempt to make the metal sear less into his skin-, the only reason he'd been _in_  the desert was because he was chasing down some child traffickers that were hoping to set up shop in Xing, and someone he called 'Colonel Bastard' was going to kill him when he got back.

Lanfan almost asked if that was his father but thought better of it. Ed hadn't mentioned anything about his parents, only his brother, and they'd barely known each other an hour, it wasn't really right of her to pry.

Lanfan had told him that she was the bodyguard to the Yao Clan's heir, that they'd been expecting someone to kidnap him to leverage the clan's power so she'd played his part and been captured instead.

"Xing sounds tough," Ed said to that, straightening his fingers on the reins, keeping the horses going straight. "I mean, one of your assassins almost killed me when I was twelve, but people really kidnap people to leverage their clans?"

Lanfan started slightly at the mention of an assassin almost killing him. That sounded like the day Ling's soulmark had almost completely faded before regaining its color.

"Sometimes," she had to shake those thoughts away, realizing that he was waiting for an answer. "A lot of the clan heirs have died in recent year—" Died was putting it  _mildly_ , but it was already a heavy topic, adding assassinations on top of it probably wasn't the best course of action at this point. "—so, there's a loss of power that their clans want to regain…the Yao Clan is one of the more powerful clans, so kidnapping the young lord would certainly do that…I love Xing, but it's not as safe a place to be right now."

Ed hummed, intrigued but clearly having nothing else to contribute to the conversation. They settled into a brief silence as he mulled over what he'd learned about the current state of Xing.

"Can I ask you something?" Lanfan asked suddenly and he shrugged his flesh shoulder, the other one starting to ache with his leg port like it did right before rain, becoming agony the longer the rain went on -his phantom pains were a real bitch-, but that was ridiculous, they were in the  _Eastern Desert,_  a place that had seen rain in hundreds of years, at least not  _a lot_  of rain, not since the fall of Xerxes. "Are golden eyes and hair common in your family?"

Ed blinked his eyes at that. "Uh," he said intelligently, "my brother and I do, well, yeah, I do." His lips drew into a thin line and Lanfan wondered if it had something to do with his brother. "We inherited all our looks from the bastard Hohenheim."

His tone was bitter and full of resentment. Maybe this Hohenheim was his father?

"Why?"

"It's a Xerxian trait, I've seen a few." Lanfan had been younger, but she vividly remembered the eerie golden eyes of a girl passing through Xing. She'd given her a wink when she'd seen Lanfan looking at her with an air of curiosity.

"Xerxians?" Ed was surprised. "As in the people of Xerxes? I didn't think there were any left after Xerxes fell."

Lanfan frowned. "I don't know about how Xerxes fell, but there's definitely a few still around. There's a word for them in Amestrian that doesn't really have a Xingese counterpart…druid? Supposedly a group of them live at the ruins of Xerxes, but no one really finds anything when they go over there."

"Maybe you saw a ghost?" Even offering that suggestion made it clear his doubt to it, given his expression of dubiousness.

Lanfan thought back to the girl, dressed like she was from another century, white robes over blue, the white only covering one arm, the other exposed, a sash winding across a shoulder. She certainly did look like someone in the wrong time, but Lanfan remembered the indents left in the sand.

"I don't think so," she said finally.

Ed bit the corner of his lip, casting his eyes upwards towards the ominous storm clouds brewing overhead. "Al and I were looking into Xerxes, but most of the books we've got are in a language no one can translate…real Xerxians?"

It was almost amusing to watch his expression warp. "As far as I know."

Ed huffed, rubbing at his shoulder port a bit more aggressively. "My mother was Amestrian, that's all I know…my father up and left us when I was five, I'm not sure I want to know his lineage or his past."

Lanfan could appreciate that. "My parents were both killed performing the same job I have now," she confided in him and Ed took one look at her and said "Lanfan, you've got balls of steel."

Lanfan hadn't laughed so hard in a long time, and that laughter turned to delighted surprise when the skies opened up and began to speckle them with rain at first before gradually picking up.

"Well, that's  _fucking wonderful."_

Oh, Ling was going to  _adore_  his fiery soulmate.

* * *

In the distance, in the remains of a once great Empire, stood a number of figures dressed in similar robes, each bearing either golden or blood red eyes, embracing the rain as it came down on them. Children shrieked in delight, men and women laughed together.

It was a good omen, Grand Cleric Logue Lowe had said and Rajul Din Basira Al-Amin had agreed.

Rain had always been a symbol of good things in Xerxes, of renewal and rebirth, centuries hadn't changed that, and they never would.

Xerxes had been buried, but its people stood tall bathed in Leto's warmth, arm in arm with the children of her sister, Ishvala.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ishval and Xerxes are going to be huge in this fic guys, we're going super AU and its going to be so much fun for you guys to find out Hohenheim's past and his sons' reactions to it…also Xing is going to be an absolute trip! I'd hoped Ed and Ling would meet this chapter, but don't worry, its coming up very soon!


	11. Too Good

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the one that was worried…I dream about this fic at night, I'm pretty sure its safe in terms of being abandoned, though I've only got a few more weeks until school starts up and everything gets put on the backburner.
> 
> Ed could've fixed the truck but what use is that if he can't drive it? Besides, Ed grew up in the country, handling a horse-drawn cart is probably preferable.
> 
> Everyone loving the stuff with Xerxes and Ishval is great because eventually we're gonna hit that hard…might be part three when that finally happens, though, we'll have to see ;)

Roy wasn't expecting it. It had only been a few hours and he wasn't really prone to worry, but after a few hours had once almost cost Ed his life, it was safe to say he was a  _bit_  paranoid. Ed  _did_  have a tendency to run off on his own, but did that mean he wasn't going to worry?  _Of course not!_

An annoyed sigh parted from his lips. He was going to blame Hughes for that line of thought; his fatherly aspirations since Elicia's birth was affecting Roy.

He'd barely made it into his house when the phone gave a sharp ring and Roy didn't even bother kicking his door shut before grabbing it up and answering with a crisp "Roy Mustang."

" _East City General Hospital, Colonel Mustang,"_  came the swift reply and Roy's uneasiness spiked.  _"You're to be notified about Major Edward Elric's medical status any time he enters a hospital, yes?"_

Roy blinked. He'd almost forgotten when he'd added that to Ed's file. It was mostly a precaution, seeing as he had a tendency to not inform anyone about his injuries or how serious they were. He wasn't as good about fooling Al, but occasionally he did pull one over on the boy, and Roy would rather not have Ed pass out suddenly in his office because of injuries he didn't want to admit.

"Is he seriously injured?" Roy asked, mentally preparing for the worst.

" _No,"_  the voice said on the other end and Roy released a silent sigh of relief, " _he's having a few lacerations stitched up and bandaged. He's a little banged up but nothing serious. We're keeping his companion for a week at most, though, she's got dehydration and malnutrition on top of a broken arm."_

Roy had no idea who they were talking about, but he thanked them anyways, hurrying out of the house just as quickly as he'd entered, sending word to Al where he was probably sitting in Ed's room waiting to hear news from Ed and trying to keep busy by looking through the number of books they had piled there. Al would want to know that his brother was safe and sound.

He probably almost crashed the car -which Ed would laugh about the traitorous little  _imp,_  like  _he_ actually knew how to drive- on the way to the hospital, but it was so late that there weren't all that many cars out on the road, so Roy didn't have to worry about getting into an accident when he skidded into the parking lot.

Finding Ed wasn't that hard, all Roy had to do was follow the loud complaints.

"I'll sign myself out,  _thanks,"_  Ed's voice was full of venom.

"An adult needs to do that," the doctor tried to counter and Ed growled.

"I'm a State Alchemist and a Major,  _I can sign myself out!"_  he all but snarled and the doctor clearly thought it was best to make a retreat in face of Ed's fire, which was probably a wise decision.

Ed blinked when Roy finally rounded the corner to get a good look at his temperamental subordinate. Ed's hair had fallen out of its braid and he'd evidently given up on tying it off again, there was a thick bandage over his arm and another one on his thigh, just barely visible under the hospital gown.

"What're you doing here, Colonel Bastard? Shouldn't you be getting so shut eye?" Ed appraised him critically. "You look like shit."

Leave it to Ed to say things like they were, but it wasn't like he was wrong. Roy's insomnia had been pretty terrible the past week and it was starting to show in the bags under his eyes.

"You're one to talk," Roy scoffed, striding forward to tilt Ed's chin and get a good look at the bruise blooming across his face, the darkest over his left eye. "I'd hate to see the other guy."

Ed started in surprise before a downright demonic grin morphed onto his face. "I left him and his buddy with the police."

Roy dropped his hand to his shoulder. "How's your leg?"

"Fine," Ed said too quickly for Roy to believe it but he didn't have the chance to argue because they both heard the tell-tale sound of metal clanging and Roy stepped back so Al could rush to his brother's side.

"Uh,  _hey,_  Al—"

"Why are you so reckless, Brother! You're always telling me to go get help when I need it _, you absolute hypocrite!"_

Ed's jaw unhinged as he gaped at his brother, sassing and shaming him like it was his business. Al had never been meek about telling Ed what he thought, but Roy didn't think that he'd actually heard the boy ever call his older brother a hypocrite.

"I didn't need any help! I had it all sorted!" Ed insisted.

"Didn't you crash that truck?" came a tired voice from the second bed, bearing a Xingese girl about Ed's age that Roy hadn't quite noticed when he'd entered. She had an arm in a cast and was hooked up to an IV.

Ed's eyebrow twitched and stabbed a finger in her direction. "Not  _helping,_  Lanfan!"

Lanfan snorted, relaxing back into her pillows.

"That's Lanfan," Ed added helpfully, "she was being brought to Amestris because the guys who grabbed her thought she was the Yao Clan heir and they wanted to leverage the clan for money and power…we kinda ran into each other."

Lanfan waved helpfully with her good arm.

Roy arched an eyebrow. That sounded like there was a political vacuum in Xing, if an heir was already being leveraged for power. Then his eyebrow twitched.

"Did you sneak an illegal alien into the country?" he asked Ed sharply.

"Does it really count as sneaking if they just didn't see her?" Ed's eyes glowed with mirth, his teeth bared into a grin.

Roy pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed while Al went up to Lanfan, thanking her for his brother and understanding that he could be a handful.

Lanfan had been amused by that. "You've never met Ling Yao," she said, eyes crinkling in the corners, "if you turn your back on him he's gone."

"Sounds like my kind of guy," Ed managed to say before pushing off Roy's hand where it ruffled the top of his head, growling, embarrassment coloring his cheeks.

For some reason she found that hilarious.

"Did you ever get to call home?" Ed asked her, looking around the room for his rather terrible choice in clothes.

Lanfan bobbed her head. "Grandfather said he'd come for me right away…I'm not sure what he's going to do about the young lord, though…knowing him, he might just tag along. He should be here in about a week, less if he hurries." She shrugged. "I think I'm going to be stuck in here for about that long."

Ed nodded in understanding, finally finding his clothes and shaking them in Roy's general direction. "Why're you here, anyways?"

"Given your rather…reckless nature, every time you appear in a hospital, I'm informed," Roy informed him flatly, eyes sharp.

" _That's—!"_  the rest of Ed's furious words were stifled quickly by one of Al's gauntlets and he glared up at his brother furiously.

"Al," Roy directed his attention towards the saner of the two Elrics, "I think you two will be staying the night at my place, given your brother's proclivity for running off despite his injuries."

" _Mmph!"_  Ed complained angrily beneath Al's hand.

They'd stayed over at Roy's place exactly three other times and only because Ed had been about to pass out on his feet and Roy's place just so happened to be closer than the dorms. Al liked it, mostly because of the books Roy had on alchemy could keep his interest while his brother slept on.

"Thank you, sir, that's very generous," Al said, his voice dripping in saccharine as he looked down on his brother.  _"Isn't that very generous, Ed?"_

Predictably, Ed quailed under those eerily glowing eyes. Roy hid his smirk; very few people could incite that kind of response out of the headstrong alchemist, but Al was definitely at the top of that list.

He stepped past the brothers who were beginning to squabble to stride to Lanfan.

"Thank you," he said to her swiftly, "Fullmetal has a tendency to get into trouble. Thank you for seeing that he got home safely."

Lanfan smiled faintly. "He was the one that knew where to go and convinced me to come here rather than run off towards Xing without any supplies. We helped each other."

Her eyes flicked towards the brothers, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. "Is the boy hiding in the metal suit Ed's younger brother Al?"

Roy could understand the confusion, when he'd first seen Al, he'd been pretty confused too. You wouldn't expect such a young and gentle voice to come from such an imposing figure. "Yes," he said, "that's Alphonse Elric."

He waited for the question that always came after, but she didn't ask, she merely nodded in comprehension. "I can't tell if they love each other or hate each other," Lanfan told him with a frown, watching Ed punch Al's chest plate with an automail fist, nowhere near hard enough to damage the metal, if that was  _even_  possible (it was a privately known fact among his subordinates that Al was the stronger of the two, a fact that Ed always remarked on with such pride).

A bubble of laughter escaped him. "Definitely love," Roy could say that with absolute certainty.

What other reason would Ed had put himself through hell and back for his brother if it  _wasn't_ love?

"All right, come on you two!" Roy turned away from Lanfan and grabbed Ed by the ear -making him squawk loudly in outrage and hooking an arm around Al's gauntlet. "Time for one of you to catch up on sleep and the other to read his way through my library."

Al laughed and Ed grumbled "That should be you,  _you fucking insomniac—!"_

Roy ignored that comment.

* * *

Predictably, Ed had passed out by the time Roy had actually driven the pair back to his place, helping scoop the fourteen-year-old half-metal boy up to place in the cocoon of Al's arms before making their way to the door.

(Ed would sleep just about anywhere and Roy had found him passed out at least twelve times in his brother's lap while Al read from a book, apparently unencumbered by his elder brother's presence. "I think he worries," Al confided in Roy, "since I can't feel anything…he doesn't want me to feel alone." Those brothers were too good for each other)

"He must've been really tired," Al murmured to Roy as he maneuvered carefully through the door, making sure Ed's head wouldn't hit anything. "He doesn't usually fall asleep this fast."

"I'm sure he had a trying day." Roy's lips twitched faintly. Ed would have to tell him the whole story tomorrow and explain how he'd gotten so cut up and bruised in the first place.

It was short work to get them situated. There weren't any extra clothes for him to wear tucked away in Roy's guest room, so Roy settled for pulling off Ed's shoes and then bringing up the sheets around him as he snoozed on, happily buried in the blankets, nuzzling into the pillow in a manner similar to Hawkeye's new puppy Black Hayate, barely wincing from moving his injured leg or arm too much.

"Brother probably won't wake up until morning," Al told Roy as he unlocked the library -though calling it a library might've been a bit much, it was little more than a room full of books. There were books within it that he was oddly protective of, books that his master had given to him with a promise that he would keep them safe. Now, even years after his death, Roy was still keeping that promise. "He sleeps a lot."

He remembered when he'd been like the Elrics, more focused on alchemy to the point of obsession and he'd seen them both scrawling out new arrays with chemical compounds that no one had ever tried before, like the drive to create was something in their blood that they couldn't suppress. Roy's desire to do the same with alchemy had remained untapped in recent years, waning in the place of his ambitions.

"I've noticed," Roy chuckled, thinking of the many times when he'd found Ed slumped against every surface known to man, including Roy's couch in his locked office. He'd come into work early one morning to find Ed slumbering there with a book on alchemy over his face and promptly had a heart attack. "You'll be all right in here on your own?"

"Of course, I'm usually alone at night," Al assured him, though it was far too sad to be reassuring. "But you look tired, Colonel, are you sure you're all right? Ed says you have insomnia."

Roy blinked a few times, trying to mentally reassert himself, the exhaustion getting to him, but every time he shut his eyes, it was like a gun was going off in his head, flames bright before his eyes, vacant red eyes and white hair stained with blood. "How does he know I have insomnia?"

Ed had stopped calling him a slacker, Roy realized belatedly. When was the last time he'd called Roy that? Was it a year ago? He still remembered Ed frowning when he found out that Roy got the most paperwork out of the other Colonels in Eastern Command, and the look on his face when Roy smelled cooking meat -burning flesh- and was violently ill. Ed might not notice as much as Al, but he still picked up on a lot of things.

"I think Lieutenant Hawkeye told him around the time he figured out how to forge your signature and started helping with your paperwork when you're sleeping," Al said, not really looking at Roy as his fingers trailed over the spines of the books he had in the shelves.

Roy was sure he was gaping. "He's been doing my paperwork?"

"We both have. Ed's better at signing your name than I am, though. I am  _very_  good at sorting, though," Al said brightly. "I sort all the paperwork by importance when we're in East City."

Roy imagined that Fuery, Havoc, and Breda were grateful of that, while Falman probably sputtered about how that went against protocol. Then he pressed a hand against his face.

"Colonel?" Al's voice was colored with concern. "What's wrong? Are you upset?"

" _You boys,"_  Roy finally said, his voice raspy with emotion, "you really are too good to me."

And then he coaxed Al down so he could pat the top of his helmet like Ed so often did. "Convince Ed to let me get a cat and we're even," Al promised, all warmth and brightness that he could rival the sun in voice alone.

That made Roy laugh. "I don't think cats are allowed in the dorms."

"They're not," Al agreed conversationally, "but we've been debating actually getting our own place in Central, that way we can actually have a place to leave all of our books and stuff…Ed's got a problem with putting down roots, though, mostly because he doesn't want me to get a cat."

The cat, evidently, was the priority.

"You're thinking about getting a place in Central City?" Roy's brow furrowed.

Of course, Roy was always vying for a transfer to Central Command, mostly because it meant that he was getting closer to the top. This time around, though, Roy had learned that there was a possibility of an opening for him to transfer to if he played his cards right. But Ed and Al had never really cared much about where they were, as long as they were together.

The last house they'd had they'd burned down when they were twelve and eleven respectively. Roy hadn't even been made aware of that fact until Hawkeye had brought it up in passing about why Ed had been so angry with Al for running off to Resembool and not telling him that he'd removed all the books from their father's study before it went up in flames.

(Roy thought it best to keep out of _that_  brotherly squabble, though it had sorted itself out rather quickly -Ed was a flake and Al was very rational-, and Ed liked to pretend there wasn't a picture of him and Al when they were younger on his desk, mostly because the first time he'd seen it, he'd tripped over his tongue and glared at Al who was rather unrepentant)

"Because you and everyone else is going to be stationed there eventually." Al shrugged his large armored shoulders, like he was stating a simple fact and not making Roy's heart constrict and make wheezes leave his throat. "Uh…sir, are you… _okay?"_

"Fine," Roy wheezed, wondering how someone so pure and good as Al had ever graced his miserable life. What did a man who had once killed children with his blaze do to deserve the Elric Brothers looking up to him enough to want to move to the city he wished to be transferred to. "But I think I'll leave you on your own and attempt to get some shut-eye."

"Good luck, sir!" Al called sincerely and quietly -so as not to awaken Ed- after him and Roy gave a half-hearted wave, shutting the door behind him, rubbing at an eye tiredly. He went to his room and shrugged off his uniform into something a bit more comfortable before pausing at the door to the guest room and silently creaking it open after a moment's deliberation.

The light from the hall cast shadows across the room and Ed had finally maneuvered himself into the best sleeping position, curving his body away from the door. Roy could see his shoulders moving with every breath; the kid must've really been exhausted from the events of the past day.

Roy always liked to joke about how small Ed was, but it was still true; Ed was small and young and carrying the weight of the world - _the weight of his own sins_ \- wouldn't change that.

Roy reached out a hand, pausing before his fingers could brush against the boy's hair. He'd been toeing the professional boundary with the boys for as long as they'd been under his command, and while Ed was still a soldier serving under his command, he was also the boy that had silently sobbed into Roy's jacket.

Roy had gotten too soft; Hughes must be so proud.

He relented and dropped his hand to Ed's hair, patting the top of his head gently. Ed mumbled something in his sleep, but he didn't awaken.

"Get some sleep, kid," he muttered under his breath. "You earned it."

Then Roy leaned back and debated whether or not he should attempt to sleep in his own bed that night, but given his proclivity to insomnia in that bed…maybe he should just cut his losses.

Roy flopped down into the armchair on the opposite side of the bed that was comfortable enough.

And the dreams that had been evading him for so long came quickly as he settled himself into a slightly more comfortable position and finally fell into a dreamless sleep, oblivious to the world.

* * *

When Al came in very early into the morning, a book tucked in his hand, moving quietly so as not to awaken either of them, he found a blanket that Ed wasn't using and carefully draped it over Colonel Mustang's slumbering form.

If Al could smile, he would've.

* * *

Fu's options were limited, unfortunately. It was relieving and surprising to hear Lanfan's voice over the phone. She was resourceful enough to make her way back to Xing without too much trouble, but he should've considered that she'd been drugged for the better part of a week and hadn't gotten much food or water and had a broken arm to boot.

He was proud when she'd told him that the would-be kidnappers no longer drew breath. He wouldn't have to worry about taking care of them himself.

Her story was indeed intriguing, mostly because she met up with a young alchemist that appeared to be Xerxian, despite being from Amestris, one that had to smuggle her into Amestris in order to take her to the hospital.

It was that kind of chaotic spirit that Fu felt he needed to meet in person to be absolutely certain he existed because Fu had never heard of an Amestrian willingly smuggling an illegal alien across the border for medical assistance.

" _Edward is a character,"_  Lanfan had agreed with a snort, " _but you'll see when you meet him."_

There was no question that Fu would be crossing the Eastern Desert to collect his granddaughter -he'd arrive the day she should be discharged from the hospital, unless he moved quickly, then it would be earlier- though he was certain she could make the journey on her own…Fu was supposed to look after her, he  _promised_  he would.

The biggest issue, then, lay with Ling Yao, who had been lying low since rumors had spread about his - _Lanfan's_ \- kidnapping.

Fu couldn't very well leave the young lord behind undefended, what would be the point of that? Especially when they went through all that trouble to make sure he was safe in the first place.

He had considered it briefly, though. There were men in the guild that had trained him that he still trusted, but they worked for other clans and it was kill or be killed in Xing for clan heirs at this point.

"Pack light," he told Ling, "we're going to collect Lanfan in Amestris." Collect  _probably_ wasn't the best way to describe it, but it was going to be difficult to get into the country on their own without a kindly alchemist to lie to military personnel for them.

The eager light that glowed in Ling's eyes at that made Fu sigh. He'd always had such an adventurous spirit, always searching and seeking, like he was looking for something or  _someone…_

Fu's thoughts lingered on the soulmark over Ling's heart.

Maybe Ling would find what he was looking for in Amestris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene with Ed sleeping was based off the scene where Hohenheim looks in on Ed sleeping when he's in Resembool after going to Xerxes and stops short before he touches his son. Al and Roy are a great dynamic to write, though, and Roy literally can't handle that Al is honestly the sweetest kid he's ever met.
> 
> There is more to see with Lanfan, unfortunately there wasn't much of her this chapter, but there should be a few more scenes with her before we don't see her for a while, but she and Fu and Ling are kinda important characters in the story, so, worry not, you will see more of her interacting with the Elrics and their support system.
> 
> But Ling is coming to Amestris! How exciting!


	12. Puzzle Pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The excitement for Ling's arrival is overwhelming you guys!
> 
> Someone asked about the policy in Amestris regarding soulmates from other countries: well, Amestris is pretty xenophobic, but having soulmates out of the country isn't as common but you can have your citizenship streamlined, so you'll go through the system faster.

It was the first night of sleep that Roy had really had in awhile and for the first time he woke up to the sensation of being well-rested. The Elrics had gone by then, but when he showed up at his office the next day, Ed was sitting on his couch in uniform looking rather sour.

Roy arched an eyebrow.

"My brother is manipulative," Ed told him rather plainly, looking like he wasn't sure if he was proud or dismayed about the whole matter.

" _Ah,"_  Roy said smartly, the thin box that had been sent by the Fuhrer was heavy in his hands with a pile of paperwork that made Ed's eyes sharpen. It made him think about what Al had said, about them helping out with paperwork when he wasn't looking; his lips twitched faintly into a smile. "This wouldn't happen to be about the cats, would it?"

Everyone who knew Al knew that he loved cats, absolutely  _adored_  them. It was amusing to see a suit of armor cooing over a little cat. It was equally amusing to watch Ed maintain his resolve when Al pulled the puppy eyes on him which was no less effective without his real body.

"It's _always_  about the cats! If we get a place then I  _have_ to let him get a cat!" Ed gesticulated wildly. "And what if the cat gets so used to Al in the armor that it doesn't recognize Al when he gets his body back? That'll just break his  _heart."_

Roy arched an eyebrow. "I think pets can pick up on things like that…besides, even if Al can't feel the cat, wouldn't it be better to just make him a little happy with what he's got until he gets his body back?"

Ed huffed, crossing his arms, but Roy could tell that was a conceding scowl.

He opened his mouth to say something when the door opened suddenly by the last person Roy would've expected. Colonel Archer might've been Roy's equal in rank, but he always seemed to ooze bitterness whenever he and Roy were in the same room. He'd wanted to be a war hero but he'd never quite managed to gain the amount of recognition Roy had attained as the Hero of Ishval.

"Am I interrupting a father-son chat?"

Roy had long-since learned to school his expression into one that didn't react to such words, but he was more impressed with how Ed's eyes grew icy and the muscle of his jaw tightened.

"I was leaving," Ed said shortly with thinly veiled contempt, despite not actually doing what he came for, pulling himself up and looping his coat under his arm. "Al and I'll probably stick around for a few days until Lanfan's out of the hospital and is on her way home." Clearly the bruise on his face and the stitches he had in his arm and leg weren't going to slow him down. Roy wanted so very dearly to sigh. "See ya, Colonel."

It was that moment that Roy realized that there was a pen and a pad of paper on his desk that hadn't been there before. In Ed's steady scrawl were the words:  _Bottom drawer._  Roy didn't have time to figure out what that meant.

Ed gave an almost mocking salute as he left and Roy resisted the urge to roll his eyes before plastering a smile on his face. "What can I do for you, Colonel Archer?"

* * *

"You should put some ice on that." Hawkeye's fingers were warm where they pressed gingerly, tilting Ed's head so she could get a good look at the bruise across his face.

"That's one hell of a shiner, boss," Havoc said, peering over her shoulder with a vague sort of interest as he arrived, pulling out his chair, preparing to sit down and sign off on his paperwork for the day.

"Thanks," Ed grunted, holding as still as possible for Hawkeye.

"Looks like it swelled in the night," Hawkeye hummed more to herself than to Ed before speaking directly to him. " _Ice,_  Edward."

"Yes, ma'am!" Ed's spine snapped straight almost immediately.

"Why're you in uniform?" Breda asked him suddenly, looking at Ed quizzically. "Don't tell me you actually like it now."

Getting Ed into the Amestrian Military Uniform was a miracle by itself and it usually involved having Al convince him to wear it.

"Al took my clothes," Ed told him sourly, making him snigger.

"Where  _is_ Al?" Fuery asked curiously, looking around with interest. Al tended to stand out like a sore thumb, and you could hear him coming a mile away, subtlety and sneakiness wasn't exactly one of his crowning traits in that suit of armor.

"He's at the hospital keeping Lanfan company." Ed wasn't too concerned. Al could take care of himself, and it wasn't like Lanfan was up to much at the moment. "I'm heading that way now."

"Did you really sneak a Xingese illegal alien into the country?" Falman's mouth drew down into a reproachful line.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ed said in a vague sort of voice. "I didn't see any illegal aliens in that cart."

Hawkeye's mouth twitched faintly and Ed glanced to her, remembering the conversation they'd had when Al had run off to Resembool without him. Now he had new questions. She'd known about Xerxes then, not much, but no one seemed to know  _much_  about it. More likely Lanfan knew the most about them, seeing as she'd actually seen a Xerxian.

He wondered if it was polite to ask.

Hawkeye seemed to notice the curiosity. "I'm sure the Colonel won't mind if I drive you over to the hospital…so long as everyone does their assigned paperwork." Her eyes were hawk-sharp and the other men quickly busied themselves. Ed snorted as she pulled out her keys and made a gesture for him to come with her.

"Something you wanted to ask me, Ed?" she asked as they walked through the halls before leaving and heading out into the parking lot.

"I, well, you don't  _have_  to answer it, it you don't want to…but you knew some things about Xerxes," Ed was trying to probe carefully, but asking Hawkeye about personal things was like asking Mom why Hohenheim wasn't there anymore.

But Hawkeye smiled, just faint enough to not be noticed immediately. "My father mentioned it once, he was very annoyed about not having access to many books on Xerxes' alchemy, he thought it would've helped his own research."

Ed sat in the front seat and had to pause, letting that information soak in. "Your  _dad_ —?"

"Was an alchemist? Yes." There was amusement and something darker present in her brown eyes. "My father, Berthold Hawkeye, only took on one student as far as I knew…a stubborn half-Xingese boy that wouldn't take no for an answer."

Ed nearly gaped. "Your dad was the  _Colonel's teacher?"_

Hawkeye nodded. "My father invented the flame alchemy that Colonel Mustang uses, actually, but he was furious with him for enlisting; he  _hated_  the military. And when the Colonel and I both die, the secret to flame alchemy will die with us."

Well, she had to concede, Ed and Al were smart kids and incredibly curious. They could probably figure out how it worked if they wanted to, but they were too focused on getting their bodies back to even consider it.

"So, I guess he didn't know much about Xerxes, then?" Ed almost sighed. It seemed like a trek into the Eastern Desert was going to be inevitable. His automail ports wouldn't be doing him any favors.

"Not so much." Hawkeye shrugged a bit helplessly, weaving between cars with ease and much more smoothly than when Mustang drove; Ed tended to grab onto the door when his supervising officer ended up with Ed in the car. "He thought maybe books on Xerxes had been suppressed by the government, but I was never actually sure if that was a conspiracy theory or if it was  _actually_  true…most of what anyone in Amestris knows about Xerxes is word of mouth or rumor."

"Know any good rumors, then?"

The car turned into the hospital parking lot.

"I know I heard my father mention one before he died," Hawkeye frowned in contemplation as she pulled into a spot and parked, giving Ed her full attention. "Just a name, a title really, the Mad Prince of Xerxes…do you think Xerxes has a way for you to get your bodies back?"

Ed's eyes drifted out of focus. It was like piecing together a puzzle with someone contributing a new piece of what had happened to Xerxes. It was _important_! Ed just  _knew_ it was. "Maybe…I mean Xerxes was literally where alchemy was born, it would make sense that there might be something there…but there's another reason." He bit his lip looking uneasy, which wasn't like him at all. "When we were on our way back to Amestris, Lanfan asked me about my hair and eyes…because apparently golden hair and eyes is a trait seen in Xerxians."

Hawkeye's eyebrows rose at that. She'd never heard of that, and, even so, that would indicate—"There are living Xerxians?" How else would she know their physical trait?

"That's what she said." Ed cupped his chin thoughtfully before annoyance creased his brow. "And, of course, we don't know anything about Hohenheim, so I guess we could  _probably_  be Xerxian…I don't know. I don't like the idea of checking out Xerxes without a lot of information."

Hawkeye's lips curved in amusement. "You've worked on less in looking for the Philosopher's Stone."

Ed tilted his head and gave a conceding grunt. She had a point there, and Al had been wanting to investigate the ruins of Xerxes for weeks, but they kept getting distracted by missions and their hunt for the Philosopher's Stone.

Hawkeye cleared her throat. "Edward," she said and his attention returned to her, "there's something that I think the Colonel hasn't gotten around to telling you, mostly because he knows you won't react well."

Ed didn't like the sound of that.

"When you took down the child trafficking ring the Fuhrer personally came to speak with Colonel Mustang to let him know that he and the higher-ups had been deeply impressed with your work and that you were up for a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel."

"I - _what?"_  Ed gaped in incomprehension.

He didn't want hardly anything to do with the military. The only reason he'd even  _become_  a State Alchemist in the first place was because State Alchemists had access to materials that civilians didn't. Granny Pinako and Winry didn't like the military, not since they'd never gotten an actual explanation for how Aunt Sarah and Uncle Yuriy had gotten killed. Well, maybe that wasn't  _completely_ accurate; Mustang and his crew were pretty decent.

 _Mustang_  was pretty decent.

Hawkeye coaxed him into opening his door. "I know how you feel about the military, but you also have to think about Al after he gets his body back…he hasn't used his body in more than three years, its likely he's going to need long-term physical therapy, and you can't pay for that if you straight up quit as soon as you get your bodies back…you need to consider your options, all right?"

Ed wanted to get angry about the whole thing. He didn't  _want_ or  _need_ a promotion, all he needed was Al, but Hawkeye wasn't wrong…Ed's only goal was getting Al's body back but he hadn't stopped to consider what to do after. He'd always taken care of Al, for as long as he could remember, but she was right…what if Al needed long-term medical treatment? He literally hadn't done anything with his body in those three years, not moved, not slept, not eaten…what did that even mean for him medically?

It was probably beyond him at the moment, but he thanked her for the ride, hopping out and pushing it to the back of his mind for the time being as he entered the hospital.

* * *

It was only when Colonel Archer finally left that Roy had the chance to look in the drawer that Ed had indicated.

He was surprised to find a detailed and articulate account of what had transpired during the takedown of the child trafficking ring, leading into the altercation in the Eastern Desert. Roy noticed that Ed neatly evaded the subject of Lanfan and the fact that he'd assisted in getting an illegal alien across the border.

That made Roy smirk.

Then he looked down.

There was a note taped to a small container that just said ' _meat day'_  and Roy had to grimace. He'd forgotten that they would be cooking something up in the cafeteria. He opened it with a hint of curiosity only to blink in surprise. It was a mixture of cooked and seasoned vegetables: potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms.

On the other side of the note said simply:  _Wasn't sure what you liked_ , followed by a cartoonish image of Ed's head, hair antenna and all with an equally cartoonish helmet beside it.

Roy had thought it smelled like something had been cooked in the kitchen that morning…but he hadn't had any of those vegetables in the house…which meant the Elrics would've had to have gone out, gotten the vegetables, cooked them, and then washed the dishes before leaving his house that morning…all without him waking up.

Something warm bloomed in Roy's chest.

* * *

"You're very different from your brother," Lanfan was quick to note. Despite the younger of the Elric Brothers being hidden within armor, she could sense his sweet disposition from his voice alone.

"That's because Ed's a reckless idiot."

Lanfan laughed. Al certainly didn't pull his punches, not even about his brother. She honestly hadn't been expecting either him or his brother to show up to keep her company. Ed was a State Alchemist, he probably had things to do, even though Al had said Ed probably wouldn't be doing much until the wound on his leg healed. ("Brother tends to rip open his stitches and it  _really_ annoys the Colonel that he doesn't care more," Al informed her, "it annoys me too, but I try not to mention it.")

Al had a Xingese book open on his lap, and, apparently, he'd brought it along to use to interrogate her with.

"Unfortunately," Lanfan told him, "I'm not much of an Alkahestrist -our alchemy-, I can sense chi but Alkahestry isn't something I know at all."

"Oh," Al seemed faintly disappointed before brightening, " _that's fine_! How does chi work? How is it different from Alkahestry?"

If Lanfan hadn't seen Al's anger towards Ed the previous night, she would've thought it was impossible for him to be angry with such a constant cheerful disposition and curious nature.

"Well, I guess the simplest way to describe it is that Alkahestry is centered on something that we call the Dragon's Pulse," Lanfan explained, pointing at an image on the page he had open with her good arm, "because the earth itself has a constant flow of chi that flows from the tops of mountains down to the land, nourishing everything it passes with that energy…it's kind of like blood moving through veins, that's a good way to think of it. Alkahestrists use chi in their Alkahestry, but you don't need to be a Alkahestrist to sense chi…does that make sense?"

"A little," Al admitted. "I guess sensing chi probably helps you be a better bodyguard."

Lanfan's lips twisted wryly. "You would think so, wouldn't you?"

Al was probably going to ask her what she meant when the door opened suddenly and Ed entered with a contemplative look on his face. He wasn't dressed like he had been the previous night in the blacks that made the brightness of his hair and eyes stand out, instead he was dressed in the blue Amestrian military uniform, cavalry skirt, ranking pins, and all.

"You look very official, Brother!" Al complimented with just a hint of cheek.

Immediately, Ed's mouth formed into a scowl and he glowered at his brother. "I'm getting my clothes back by tonight, Al, or you're gonna be in a  _world of hurt."_

"Like you could ever hurt me," Al said and when Ed slumped into the chair beside his brother, he flinched hard. Lanfan frowned in confusion. "So, people can get around their chi being sensed?"

Lanfan's eyes flicked towards Ed, curious concern creasing her brow, but Ed waved her off, something dark behind his eyes, something  _old_ …she didn't know quite how to explain it.

"Yes, like assassins," Lanfan offered, "they're very good at hiding their chi…One got around Grandfather and I and the young lord was almost killed." She rubbed her hand against her own throat over where Ling's scar was. It was an action she'd seen Ling perform whenever he felt anxious or stressed. She doubted that he actually realized he had a nervous tick. "Then again, the young lord is also pretty good at disappearing on us without us noticing."

She grimaced and Ed sniggered.

"Isn't this the same guy you were pretending to be?" Ed asked her.

"Yes," Lanfan sighed, lamenting at what her life had become.

She didn't bother telling them that she could sense both of their chi and how uneasy Al's made her feel. It didn't feel like the natural flow of chi, more like someone had twisted it, not that the chi itself was twisted or wrong…but it was  _different_  in a way that she wasn't familiar with.

"So, what's Xing like?"

Thankfully she found herself not having to bring any of that up, settling into a topic she was actually comfortable with, and Lanfan couldn't help but smile.

* * *

Roy had fallen asleep at his desk again, which, given the fact that he'd actually slept quite well that night, was a _bit_  surprising, but what was even more surprising was that he was awaken to the sensation of someone poking him a bit aggressively in the cheek.

"Would you like to keep that finger, Fullmetal?" he asked tiredly.

The poking stopped and there was a faint huff as Roy finally pried his eyes open, blinking hazily at the blob of blue and gold before him until it came into focus.

"Didn't you sleep last night?" Ed asked him, flummoxed at he inspected his superior officer's face intently. The bags that had been rather pronounced under his eyes when he'd come to pick Ed up from the hospital were lighter, but they were still there.

"Surprisingly," Roy drawled out, considering Ed before his lips twisted at the corners. "Your vegetables were very good."

Ed's dark cheeks pinked and he scoffed loudly, leaning back. "Whatever," he said, "I just didn't want you puking over the paperwork and making Lieutenant Hawkeye mad." He brushed his bangs back from his hot cheeks. "Al picked out the veggies and cut them, he just had me cook them…you know, because he can't really _tell_  when things are undercooked or overcooked."

He said the words nonchalantly but Roy could practically taste the undercurrent of self-loathing.

Roy stood up and wound his arms around Ed suddenly enough to make Ed jolt in surprise.

"Colonel Bastard?" he muffled into his jacket, his shoulders just faintly tense.

"You looked like you needed a hug," Roy said simply, leaning down to rest his cheek against the top of Ed's head. He remembered his mother doing that for him before the accident. "Someone's got to keep your thoughts from taking a nose dive."

Ed growled under his breath, but grudgingly relaxed, bringing his arms up. "This isn't going to help people not think you're my dad," he pointed out, speaking just loud enough for Roy to pick the words out.

Roy had had a long time to come to terms with the idea that most people were under the impression he'd fathered the Elric Brothers. Of course, anyone who could do basic math knew that  _was incredibly unlikely_ , he was only fifteen years older than Ed. The conflict in Ishval had only come close to Resembool once and that was far before Roy had even enlisted, so being on leave there nine months before Ed was born was a rather distinct impossibility.

Ed and Al were great kids, but they weren't his.

"If I hugged Havoc do you think rumors might spread that he's my son, too?" Roy considered, his mouth twitching.

That got the response he'd been expecting; Ed sniggered into his jacket.

Ed kept his arms around Roy for a brief few moments more but then he released Roy, averting his eyes. "I'm all right," he muttered, "I just…I really—" Ed couldn't quite force the words out.

"Getting Al his body back is going to take  _time."_  Roy dropped a hand to Ed's shoulder. "You knew that going in…you're not giving up, you're chasing every lead, Al knows that, he doesn't think less of you because of how long it's taking."

Ed blinked furiously. "I know he doesn't but…" But Ed did. He hated that he'd locked his brother in a metal prison and he hated how there wasn't a quick fix to that. He hated that Al couldn't feel the sun or the rain - _he used to lay on sunny hills and splash in puddles in the rain-,_  he hated that Al couldn't eat the foods that he liked, he hated that Al had to stay awake all night and all day, he hated that Al's soulmark had vanished with his body and he had no idea if his soulmate was even alive (he didn't know how much Mei Chang wondered the same), and he hated that his brother couldn't even  _smile_  or make any kind of obvious facial expression.

Ed had to shake himself and Roy squeezed his shoulder. "Did you need something, Ed? Or do you just enjoy ruining delightful naps?"

" _Grouch_ ," Ed snorted. "Nah, I had an actual question about something the Lieutenant told me about…"

"Ah," Roy could feel the realization spreading. Either that meant there was an impending explosion, or Ed was actually open to the idea of being promoted.

Roy wasn't even sure which one was better.

If nothing ended up broken, it would be a  _miracle._

* * *

"Maes, I think I've basically adopted two boys," Roy had to grudgingly admit over the phone.

Hughes couldn't stop laughing.

* * *

Crossing the Eastern Desert was hard and hot, and it definitely would've been worse if Ling had been walking through the sand instead of taking a horse through it.

He didn't know how Lanfan had managed it, especially playing the part of the hostage for almost the entire time, and he didn't know how Fu had managed it in solid black, which was  _almost_  as impressive. Ling was dressed in his loose white pants and cheongsam and it still scorched him through it.

Sneaking into Amestris had required a lot of caution, though, it was important and he paid attention, but once they were within East City, Ling got lost almost immediately. It was only _half_  by accident, but Ling was hungry and thirsty and so so  _tired._

It surprised no one, least of all him, that he ended up collapsed in an alley. He was so out of it that he barely felt someone prodding him.

"What'd you find, Al? Another cat?"

"Well…" The voice closest to him sounded metallic and young as he was lifted up. "Not exactly."

The first voice choked. "What the  _fuck?_  Is he dead?"

"I don't think so?" The second voice -Al- wasn't too sure.

"Go ask the vendor around the corner if they'll give you a glass of water or something, maybe he needs water."

Ling was still dazed and confused, but a sound like metal clanging together moved away from him as soft and warm hands situated him against the wall a bit more comfortably. Fingers fluttered down to his neck, pressing against his pulse for a few moments before deciding, "Well, at least you're not dead."

The clanging metal sound returned. "Here you go, Brother."

"Thanks, Al."

And when he finally came fully to, there was possibly the cutest boy cupping the back of his head with one hand and the other holding a small cup, pouring water carefully into his mouth while a hulking suit of armor watched with apprehension.

His eyes were golden to match the long hair in a thick braid falling over one shoulder -Ling wasn't sure if it was longer than his, but it certainly looked it- with sun-dark skin and a soulmark the exact color and shape of his own on the right side of his throat.

"This is a good dream," he managed to croak out and his sun-touched soulmate furrowed his brow.

"What're you going on about,  _weirdo?_  Al, here, found you  _literally_  passed out twelve seconds ago."

"You," Ling remarked decisively with about as much strength as he was capable of, "are  _very_ cute."

And the flushed expression of confusion was the last thing he saw before he passed out again, leaving Edward Elric incredibly flustered and incredibly befuddled, holding a Xingese prince with no idea what was going on.

"What the  _fuck?"_  he asked emphatically.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> XD They've officially met! TGS will be having three parts, and there's gonna be a lot of stuff going on in part 2, but part 3 is gonna be just as fun!
> 
> I've only got a few weeks of summer left before school starts so I'm trying to get out as many chapters as possible :)


	13. Ling Yao

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GAY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank fuck you all like the Papa!Roy and the Edling, because it only gets worse/better from here on out.
> 
> And a huge thank you to everyone that's sent me fanart because I'm still literally sobbing over ever single piece of fanart, they're all my favorite, thanks you guys!

There were a lot of things that Al could've said, but he opted for "Hey, isn't that the same coat Lanfan was wearing? The one she said was the Yao clan heir's?" which was helpful, because Ed's brain had fucking  _quit_  the second the kid had called him cute.

But he wasn't wrong, it  _was_  the same jacket. Ed felt the texture with his fingers just to be certain, soft and heavy, a comfort during the cold nights out in the desert, no doubt. Golden yellow with white accents forming into the symbol that Lanfan had told them was the Yao Clan symbol.

"You don't think he's actually the prince she was protecting, do you?" That would be just Ed's luck, the guy passing out on him actually being one of the people that was coming to take Lanfan home.  _Shit._  Was he really holding a prince?

"I'll go find out!" Al said brightly, leaving Ed with the passed-out boy in his arms.

" _Hey! Al!"_  Ed yelled after his brother, but he was long gone. "Great, just  _great…"_

Even if the kid wasn't with Lanfan, leaving him passed out in an alley seemed like a poor choice, even by Ed's standards, and he wasn't outrageously heavy -or even heavy at all, jeez, did the kid even  _eat?-,_  but after walking around with him slung on Ed's back, heading in the direction of the hospital, he began to rethink his choices.

Who called someone cute and then passed out? What a  _weirdo_. But it still managed to fluster Ed. Usually when people called him cute it was demeaning 'aw, what a cute little kid', but he'd been mostly out of it, -dehydration could do that to you- his dazed, black eyes finding Ed's like he was an oasis in the middle of the desert.

Ed wasn't sure how to handle it apart from the fact that he'd suddenly realized he liked boys. Well, at least he and Winry would have something to talk about, because it wasn't every day that a cute Xingese boy called  _you_  cute, in turn.

Was he even Ed's type? Ed didn't think he had a type. Oh  _no_ …what if he  _was_ Ed's type?

So, Ed did what he always did when he had no idea how to deal with things; he put them completely and aggressively out of his mind.

There were other things to be worried about than the warmth against his back, the arms looped slightly around his neck, a few stray hairs tickling against his skin…yeah,  _absolutely._  Ed was not getting distracted, nope,  _not at all._

 _Fuck._  Ed was so utterly and completely  _gay._

Ed forced himself to focus, he could deal with his sexuality at a later date when his brain wasn't so cluttered with the decision that Mustang had left him with.

"Being a Lieutenant Colonel does mean you'll have a bit more responsibility," Mustang had carefully explained, interlocking his fingers, giving Ed his full attention, "but, at the same time, it also means that you might have more time to commit to research."

"Don't you still go on missions, though?" Ed had asked him, his brow furrowed.

"Sometimes," Mustang had admitted with a grimace and Ed could remember a time when he'd come in to give his report and Lieutenant Hawkeye had warned him to not stress the Colonel's ribs. "Not as often."

Ed still wasn't sure about it.

But it would probably be better to not worry about it when there weren't arms subconsciously tightening around him, or when there wasn't a cheek nuzzling against the back of his neck.

Ed could feel the heat rising in his face.

* * *

Thankfully for Fu's nerves, despite losing the young lord almost immediately, finding him was almost as easy, because as soon as he made it to Lanfan's hospital room, he already sensed the young lord's chi signature within.

"—he just passed out on me!"

"Oh, Ed, you sound  _embarrassed."_

"Square up, Lanfan, I'm gonna  _deck you_  and that bed isn't gonna stop me!"

" _Calm down,_  Brother!"

Fu eased the door open to take in the strange sight before him. The young lord was snoozing on a rather uncomfortable chair next to the bed that Lanfan was sitting on top of, dressed and ready to leave with her arm in a sling and looking in far better spirits than he'd been expecting, almost smirking at a blond-haired boy that was being held back by a rather imposing suit of armor.

Fu blinked once and then twice, both at the strangeness of the entire scene, but also because, clear as day, on the right side of the boy's throat was the  _exact_  soulmark of Ling Yao.

Well, Fu had certainly been wrong about it meaning that the young lord's soulmate was Xingese…but the boy certainly didn't seem any less fiery.

"Grandfather!" Lanfan smiled widely. "I thought you'd get here before the young lord ran into Edward."

The blond-haired boy growled.

"Brother," came a surprisingly youthful sigh from within the suit of armor.

Fu stepped forward, cataloguing Lanfan's injuries, but the scrape on her jaw had long-since scabbed over and the broken arm didn't seem to be bothering her much. Relief flowed through his spine, relaxing it faintly before his eyes flicked over to where the young lord was slumped in his seat. His mouth was gaping as he breathed evenly and deeply.

The boy named Edward rubbed at his cheek slightly. "Al found him passed out in an alley," he informed Fu, "we got some water down his throat before he passed out again."

A sound not unlike a snigger left the suit of armor and Edward turned bright red before elbowing it harshly. "Hey, zip it, Al!"

"I didn't say anything!" Al practically chirped back.

"He's probably just hungry," Fu finally decided, "that and seeing you probably overexcited him."

Edward had probably never looked so offended.

* * *

When Ling came completely around and gorged himself on Lanfan's hospital food because "Al already brought me something to eat for lunch, don't worry about it" and had drank through two cups of water, he was actually able to pay attention to what was going on.

"You didn't hear this from me," his breathtaking soulmate said with the map of Amestris spread across Lanfan's lap, "but the easiest way to get out of Amestris is probably to go out through Welosl in the Southern Region…they're not as big on border patrol as the other areas and its pretty close to the edge of the Eastern Desert. We can take you, if you want."

"Thank you," Fu said, "but you've already done so much for my granddaughter and for us, we wouldn't want to cause you any more trouble."

Edward Elric -Ed he'd told them to call him- looked up to his brother, his brow furrowing slightly. "Well, all right, if you're sure."

Fu inclined his head and Ling really wanted to disagree. If Ed took them to Welosl then he could spend more time with him! But at the same time…Amestris was an unknown entity. In Xing it was dangerous, but it was a familiar kind of danger, one that Ling could expect; Amestris was _full_  of the unexpected.

He glanced over to Ed and when Ed caught him looking, his cheeks flushed and he turned away quickly. Lanfan arched an eyebrow in exasperation at Ling and he gave her a sunny grin in return.

"The least we can do is get you the train tickets," Al offered helpfully.

Fu opened his mouth to refuse but Lanfan had shook her head.

"Its best not to argue with Al, he can be very convincing," Lanfan laughed, "just ask Ed."

" _Hey!"_  Ed complained before choking when his brother turned those glowing balls of light from within the armor on him and he seemed to almost wilt. He sighed. "One cat, Al,  _one."_

" _YES!"_

Al's excitement shook the floor as he wound his arms around his brother, squeezing him so tightly that Ed grunted, lifting him completely off the ground, rubbing the side of his helmet to Ed's cheek in a manner that was vaguely cat-like.

Ed had one eye winced shut. "Al," he rasped through squeezed lungs, "if I'm dead,  _no cat."_

"Right, sorry!" Al released him. "I'll go get those tickets!" He practically danced out of the room, leaving two very confused illegal aliens in his wake.

Ed rubbed his cheek, a bit bemused. "You know, I think that's the most excited he's been since Mom—"

Then Ed's teeth snapped tight, gritting together. Ling could see so many emotions flit across his face, but the one he saw the clearest was the bone-wrenching agony.

"Its been awhile since he was this excited," Ed amended tiredly.

"Must really like cats," Ling agreed with a nod, still grinning widely when Ed suddenly laughed, bright and loud and impossibly warm, like the sun.

"Al's a sucker for strays," Ed had to agree before getting up and following after him.

"Young lord," Fu sighed when he was certain that Ed was gone, Ling still staring after him with an expression akin to longing, "it seems I was wrong about your soulmate, he isn't Xingese at all…just the sun  _personified."_

Ling's cheeks colored as he rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. It wasn't like he had any choice in who his soulmate was, but by the Sage, he was  _not_ complaining. Ed, on top of being  _unfairly_ cute and pretty, was so full of fire that Ling just wanted to be  _consumed_. He'd never met anyone quite so fierce before, never mind a Xerxian that wasn't in the Eastern Desert, mostly unseen.

"Ed and Al are looking into Xerxes and Alkahestry," Lanfan offered helpfully.

That surprised both Fu and Ling. "They're not from Xerxes?" Fu arched an eyebrow. In reality, it was quite impossible for Ed -and Al, though neither had seen his body to gauge his appearance- to not be, not with the golden hair and eyes, and the copper-brown color of his skin that wasn't uncommon among Xerxians.

"They were born here." Lanfan shrugged one shoulder, her other one immobilized by the sling. "Apparently they look a lot like their father, but I wouldn't bring that up." She grimaced and Ling got the feeling that it was a point of contention. "Anyways, I promised that I'd send them some Alkahestry books once we get home as a thank you, equivalent exchange and all that…Al was the most excited about that."

Fu turned a bemused expression on her. It seemed she'd actually had some fun, despite the serious nature of pretending to be the Yao heir, and made a few friends along the way…and yet Alphonse Elric made him uneasy. He doubted that Lanfan was skilled enough to sense it, but the boy's chi fluctuated in a way that wasn't normal, going between seeming almost twisted in quality and simply not existing.

Fu had never heard of such a thing, but he knew that there was something distinctly not normal about the Elric Brothers.

* * *

"Youswell?" Ed furrowed his brow. "Never heard of it, where is it?"

" _Close to the border of the Eastern Region_ ," Mustang said on the other end of the phone,  _"it's a mining town."_

"It doesn't have anything to do with the Philosopher's Stone, does it?" Ed used his shoulder to hold the phone in place as he dug out his small journal to find where he'd jotted down the likely places to investigate for the Philosopher Stone. Al said his journal was actually quite impossible to read since it was coded to read like a travel log that Ed hadn't initially realized but hadn't bothered to change up.

" _No, I want you to look into the Lieutenant in charge over there, First Lieutenant Yoki,"_  Mustang waved him off.  _"There's some discrepancy in their paperwork regarding income from the mine."_

Ed scowled. "That's not my usual gig."

" _Well, a lieutenant colonel has a lot more responsibility than a major,"_  Mustang said mildly and Ed scowled, " _and, speaking of which, you haven't given me a response to that yet."_

Ed growled under his breath. "I'm kinda busy over here!"

" _We're all busy, Fullmetal, but you can't procrastinate on this forever."_

"Tough talk from the guy that waits until  _an hour_  before his paperwork is due to start working on it," Ed huffed.

There was a short stilted silence on the other end. " _All right,"_  Mustang conceded, " _I'll give you that."_

"Thanks," Ed drawled, "'appreciate it."

Mustang snorted. " _Is your friend heading out, then? If you're calling from the hospital?"_

"Yeah, her grandfather and her…" Ed floundered briefly to come up with a proper word to describe Ling Yao that Lanfan wouldn't kill him for, but all he could think about was the dazed look on his face when he'd called Ed cute and then the glances he'd cast Ed's way since. Ed could feel his blood pressure rising. "—cousin," he decided on, "are here to pick her up, I think they'll be leaving soon."

" _Ah, good…I heard none of that, and we're going to keep it that way."_

Ed rolled his eyes. "Sure thing, Colonel. Al and I'll head out for Youswell in a bit." And then he hung up before Mustang could say anything else.

"You aren't going to get in trouble because of us, are you?"

Ed yelped loudly, twisting wildly to see Ling standing there, giving him that bright smile, his eyes closed. If he was cute before, he was  _unbelievably_  cute now.

"Nah," Ed finally managed to force out, stumbling just slightly over his words, "I mean, I kinda snuck Lanfan into Amestris and then didn't  _officially_ tell anyone about her…so if you guys are careful, you can probably leave without the police even noticing you were here in the first place."

Ling's smile broadened. "We'll be careful."

"Well, that's—" Ed made a meaningless gesture with his right arm and his metal arm caught the light briefly, directing Ling's attention downwards. He grimaced instantly. It was true that Ed didn't try too hard to hide his automail. The leg was almost always hidden unless his pants got ripped, but his arm was only hidden so long as his sleeves didn't roll up or his glove wasn't damaged, and Ed  _hated_  explaining his prosthetic to people.

"I heard that Amestris had a type of steel prosthesis." Ling's eyes gleamed with intrigue, leaning his head forward slightly to the arm. "We don't have anything like that in Xing."

"You don't?" Ed blinked in surprise.

"May I?" Ling held out his hands and Ed deliberated for a moment. Ling seemed honestly curious about the prosthesis, though, and it was probably the first time he'd seen anything like it. Ed wasn't ashamed of Winry's craftsmanship.

He took his glove off and held the arm out to Ling. The arm was wired to sense pressure, so he easily registered even the lightest of touches as Ling's fingers smoothed over the arm, fitting over grooves and the metal plates running together. Even though he couldn't  _really_  feel it, though, a tingle went down his spine.

Ling was very close, Ed realized a bit belatedly, and it was that closeness that was flustering Ed beyond belief. This had never happened to him before and Ed could practically  _feel_ his brain short-circuiting.

Ling's attention was completely focused on Ed's arm, giving Ed the chance to get a closer look at him without being too blatant.

He knew that Mustang was half-Xingese, but the only similarities he could see between Ling and him were their dark hair and eyes. Ling's cheeks had a healthy glow to them, faintly tanned from traveling the week through the desert, his bangs falling over one eye, hiding it almost entirely from view. He was wearing the exact same thing as Lanfan; a light cheongsam with all the buttons done up, the yellow jacket open and over his shoulders, and loose white pants.

But Ed's eyes caught the most on a thin scar across his throat, looking almost like it had been caused by a thread.

"Assassination attempt when I was twelve," Ling supplied and Ed had to mentally shake himself, realizing that Ling had seen him looking.

" _Oh!_  Um, sorry for—" Ed didn't know if he was more embarrassed to have been caught staring or by the reason for the scar.

But Ling waved him off, his smile still here. "Don't worry about it, you've probably got scars of your own."

There was something almost knowing in his voice that Ed didn't quite understand, but his free hand drifted to his side where he'd been stabbed at nearly thirteen, his thoughts drifting to the thick scarring at his shoulder and over his thigh where his limbs had been ripped off, where the automail ports had been placed.

" _Ah,_  that was a bit forward, sorry," Ling said quickly, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly with the hand that wasn't holding onto Ed's.

Ed wasn't in a hurry to bring it up; mostly, he was stunned. Of course, Winry and Granny touching his automail limbs wasn't that big of a deal, they made a living out of it; Winry had personally made Ed's limbs, but other people tended to flinch at the sight of them. Automail was more advanced than standard prosthetics, but they were still a sign that you weren't  _complete,_  that you were  _missing_ something…there was nothing  _natural_ about having steel grafted to skin.

But Ling had touched it freely, and thoughtlessly. It might've been his own arm of flesh and blood, but  _Ed_  knew it wasn't,  _Ling_  knew it wasn't…and he hadn't found it unsightly or startling…he'd found it  _intriguing_ and  _curious._

Ed's heart leapt in his chest _. Fuck._  He had the looks and this? Ed was  _so_  screwed.

And Ling's hand was still on his wrist.

He swallowed thickly. "That's all right, Al says I'm too reckless; scars kinda come with the territory."

Ling Yao's laugh was completely and utterly golden and Ed wanted to melt into a puddle.

* * *

"I hope the young lord didn't overwhelm you," Lanfan said as she made her final goodbyes to the Elrics, her grandfather and Ling already on board with another thank you to Ed and Al. "He can be a bit… _clingy."_

Ed snorted tugging on one ear awkwardly, cheeks still pink, trying not to think about how just before Ling had climbed onto the train he'd wound himself around Ed like an octopus and kissed his cheek. Ed was still trying to calm his racing heart, not that it was doing him much good. "Clingy… _yeah_ …that sounds about right."

Al tittered inside his armor and Ed shot his brother a glare, still flushed, before turning back to Lanfan, his face serious. "But seriously, if you guys ever need help, come find us."

With that said, Ed ripped out a page from his journal and wrote down a number quickly and a name, shoving it at Lanfan.

The name was 'Roy Mustang' and Lanfan arched an eyebrow remembering the Xingese man in the military uniform that had come to the hospital, concern over Ed coloring his chi.

"We don't have our own phone yet," Ed supplied helpfully, "so if you want to get a hold of us, you'll need to go through that number."

They almost had the house in Central, but now they were waiting on the appropriate paperwork.

"I hope things go okay in Xing," Al fretted, twisting his gauntlets together. "What happens if you get back and they try another kidnapping or assassination?"

Lanfan patted his arm, eyes soft. Al did that to people, he made people go sweet on him without hardly even trying. "Don't worry too much, Al, the young lord has Grandfather and I, and I can kick some ass even with my arm broken."

Ed gave a conceding nod. "She can," he agreed, remembering the two bodies Lanfan had kicked from the cart as he'd pulled himself from the wreckage of that truck he'd helped crash ('helped' was definitely putting it mildly, but Ed wasn't about to admit that).

Lanfan definitely smirked, and it was in a way that made Ed want to take several steps back and remain on guard at all times.

"If we ever find ourselves in Amestris, we'll come see you," she promised as she heard the whistle for the last call before the train would leave. " _Besides_ …the young lord's got a soft spot for you." Her smile was too knowing as Ed's face light up, and she gave the pair one last wave before hopping inside and making her way to where Ling and her grandfather were sitting.

She arched an eyebrow towards Ling, settling into her seat. "You didn't want to tell him?"

It'd been on his mind, she could tell, and there was a rather forlorn expression on his face as the train gathered speed, moving down the tracks and away from the station, leaving Ed and Al behind.

Ling sighed morosely, resting his head on his fist. "Didn't seem safe," he muttered.

If Xing Ying knew about his soulmate on top of the Emperor? Ed could handle himself, there was no doubt about that, but these were dangerous times they lived in, and Ling didn't want to paint an even bigger target on Edward Elric's back.

It was safer, for now, if he didn't know.

One day, hopefully, one day  _soon,_  Ling would be able to push his shirt aside and show Ed the identical mark on his chest to match to the one on the side of Ed's throat.

Ling could suffer in silence until then, knowing, at least, that he was safe.

* * *

"So…Ling, huh?" Al sounded like the cat that got the canary, the red lights that were his eyes within the armor seeming to almost glow more brightly.

"Oh, shut up," Ed hunched his shoulders, "you heard Lanfan, he's  _clingy!"_

"Yeah, yeah,  _but!"_  Al held up a finger incredibly cheerfully, which was generally a bad sign. "You're the one he called cute, remember?"

"He was  _delirious!"_

"He hugged you and  _kissed you_  on the cheek!"

"Maybe that's traditional in Xing!" Ed fired back, face burning hotter and hotter as Al continued on.

"Oh, yeah,  _totally,_  that explains why Fu and Lanfan did the  _exact same thing."_  Ed could practically hear Al rolling his eyes at him.

" _You—!"_  Ed's tongue betrayed him and he couldn't quite get any words out before growling in defeat. "You're the worst, Al, let's just get those fucking tickets to Youswell."

"Sure thing, Brother." Al's words dripped in saccharine and Ed hated him so very much.

His cheek still felt warm where Ling's lips had brushed against his skin…and  _fuck_  was Ed utterly and completely gay.

He rubbed a hand over the soulmark on the side of his throat and tried not to think too hard about it. Ed had other things to worry about.

Youswell sounded pretty standard, and after this week, what could go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Al hugging Ed after he agrees to the cat is slightly based off the scene in CoS where Al's armor hugs Ed on Earth after coming through the portal. And yes! Al is getting a cat! Its very exciting for him.
> 
> Ed's very gay and Al is sweeter than pie, but what else is new?
> 
> Canon is, of course, out of wack, and you'll be seeing some more characters popping up earlier than in FMA :)


	14. Underhandedness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently everyone loved last chapter, which is good, because when Ling shows back up again, its probably going to be that level of gay, so there's that to look forward to.
> 
> I have never read so many 'gay mood' comments as there were on the last chapter. Same, bitch.
> 
> We're gonna stretch the imagination a bit in regards to Alchemy this chapter, but bear with me. I actually found this chapter really hard to get through.

First Lieutenant Yoki may have bought his way into his position in the military, but Youswell wouldn't be profitable for much longer, he need to pump the last of the worth out of the mine and find a way to move on and up, because what Yoki really wanted was a promotion, just being a  _captain_  would increase his pay, his  _influence._

"Sir!" one of his men saluted respectfully. "This concerns the Halling's inn. It seems that every night disturbing elements gather there and complain about their treatment."

The miners of Youswell had long-since been a thorn in Yoki's side, always so angry with him for increasing the taxes and lowering the pay.

Yoki considered his options. "Burn it to the ground when night falls."

He received a wide grin for the command.

* * *

The town of Youswell was very distrustful of the military, that had been rather plain when they'd kicked Ed out of the inn for nothing less than being tied to the Amestrian Military, and while Al could understand not trusting the military, it seemed like these people just really needed the help.

Their tools needed to be mended, their clothes were frayed, they didn't seem to have as much food.

"Sorry kid, but anyone tooting the military's horn isn't welcome here. I can't forgive anyone who would sell their soul to the military for its many special privileges."

"My brother joined the military for me," Al said quietly, carefully, and more importantly,  _dangerously._  Everyone knew about his brother's loud temper, but Al's quietly stewing wrath was just as deadly.

The man in charge of the inn -Mr. Halling- balked slightly at that. "How old are you, kid?"

"Thirteen, Brother's fourteen."

"Bit young to joining up with the military," Mr. Halling replied archly.

"Brother got his certification when he was twelve," Al replied with a shrug of his heavy shoulders. "Look…my brother is here because his commanding officer thought there was something wrong with the paperwork here about income and taxes."

"We've heard that one before," another man snorted. "Last guy was bribed without too much effort."

"My brother's too stubborn to be bribed like that." Al would've rolled his eyes if had them. "The only things he can be bribed with are food and alchemy books, and that usually only works for the Colonel…besides, he's already up for a promotion, he doesn't _need_  a bribe."

That caused there to be some muttering throughout the entire room.

"Look, we don't even really know anything _about_  Youswell," Al was quick to explain. "But if we can help, we will, we just need to know what's going on."

They all deferred to Mr. Halling before deciding. "All right, let your brother in."

Al clanked over to the door, opening it to see Ed sitting on the lowest stair, his thick journal open and Al leaned over his shoulder to see that he was actually just tracing over the outline of the Yao Clan symbol that he'd sketched there on the ride over.

Al thought it was cute. Ed didn't really ever think much about himself, not if he could be expending those efforts to find a way to get Al's body back, but it was nice that Ed got to feel like a normal teenager, even if it was just for a day. A normal, incredibly flustered teenager that didn't know what to do with a Xingese prince flirting very heavily with him.

He couldn't help but wish he could feel things like Ed could, even things like that. The bitter sting of not being able to felt like a dark stain over his soul but Al had to remind himself of the time the Colonel had had him come to his office without Ed.

" _Your brother's beating himself up again over you," Colonel Mustang said, his eyes fixing on Al's even though most found them unnerving, "do me a favor and remind him from time to time that running himself ragged trying to find a solution isn't going to get him any closer to it."_

" _I'll tell him," Al assured him. "I don't think it'll make much of a difference."_

_Colonel Mustang sighed. "It always makes a difference when it's you, Al."_

"Aw," Al said loudly behind Ed, making his brother choke and whirl around, completely red in the face, "thinking about Ling?"

"You-I-no- _shut up!"_  Ed stuttered over his words before actually managing something intelligible, making Al laugh. "How's it going in there?"

Al thought it was a nice diversion, but he'd give it to Ed. "They've agreed to talk with us since we really don't know anything about what's going on here."

"Nice of them." Ed arched an eyebrow, but Al could be very convincing when he wanted to be, and Ed was hungry, so he followed his brother back inside, sitting down at the table he'd been sitting at minutes ago, finally getting to eat the food he'd paid for. "You guys must really not like the military, then."

Kyle, Mr. Halling's son, nodded his head aggressively. "Everyone hates the military. First Lieutenant Yoki controls this place. He's really money crazy. He's the  _worst."_

Ed glanced to Al with a frown. "He's the one we're here to look at."

"Don't know why Central would care," one of the men sneered, "they really love the guy, even when he keeps sending them bribes."

"We're from Eastern Command," Al informed politely, "and Colonel Mustang doesn't take bribes."

"Unless you've got veggies on meat day," Ed pointed out.

"Oh,  _yeah."_

"So, he bribed his way to being a lieutenant?" Ed asked them all seriously, which a few of them found a bit surprising, given he'd been cracking jokes just a few short minutes ago.

"He used to just be a coal mining proprietor but he got greedy for a promotion," Mr. Halling said as he wiped a glass. "This place is his private property now."

"He takes advantage of his rights and lowers our salaries down to crumbs! And on top of that, all of the guys who tried to complain about Yoki and his bribes get smashed up!"

That explained why the cost of food and board was so high. The people of Youswell were probably being bled dry just trying to be kept afloat. The inn was rundown, the entrance into the mine was unstable.

"What if you bought back the mine from him?" Ed asked Mr. Halling curiously and the man snorted loudly.

"You think any of us have that kind of money, kid? Got a couple of gold bars lying around? Because I'm pretty sure that that's all that he'll take."

Al leaned down, not really bothering to lower his voice, uncaring as he turned to his brother. "We could make the gold."

"Yeah, but alchemists are forbidden from turning lead into gold, remember?" Ed shook his head.

"But these people need help!" Al pressed. He knew all about the two taboos; he'd performed them both. "Besides, I can make gold, I've done it before!"

"You've  _what?"_  Ed gaped at him. "What the  _hell,_  Al? When?"

"Uh…I think I was eight?" Al sounded vaguely sheepish as Ed fell out of his chair in shock. "I figured you would've tried already so why not?"

Everyone in the pub was watching them with rapt attention, not really knowing what was going on.

"I had better things to do than try to make gold, Al! Did it even turn back to lead afterwards?"

"Uh…don't think so?" Al didn't sound too sure. "I put it in the box with all of Hohenheim's things at Granny's house…it was still gold when I went back in the basement last year."

"You can make gold?" Kyle's eyes were blown wide. "Can you make us some?"

"Get real," Ed said with a sigh from the ground, "if Al makes you gold then Yoki'll just take it as taxes." He wasn't wrong, even if it wasn't illegal on top of everything else. Ed glanced out the window; it was getting pretty late. "Hm…I've got an idea."

"Is it illegal and one that Colonel Mustang is going to have to pretend not to know about if he's asked?" Al asked archly.

Ed sniggered. "Probably both."

* * *

Al was right about one thing, the town, for sure, needed help, and if he took down a corrupt lieutenant along the way?  _Icing on the cake._  Of course, Ed always compared any lieutenant he ran across to Lieutenant Hawkeye, so,  _of course_  they always came up short, but Hawkeye did her job and did her job well.

He didn't think the townspeople were lying, not with the state of the town itself in comparison to the practical mansion that the lieutenant appeared to live in, but he needed more proof.

So, sneaking into Yoki's mansion seemed like a good idea…finding and stealing the deed to the mine however, that was probably just slightly more legal than Al transmuting some gold, which Ed was still trying to wrap his head around.

There were a lot of different ways Ed could go about it, and being underhanded was one of his chief qualities.

Transmuting gold was just one option but, to be perfectly honest, Ed would rather not get Al into trouble. The last thing they needed was anyone looking too closely at the hollow armor with a child's voice. But Ed liked being sneaky.

"Brother, are you sure about this?" Al whispered. "It seems  _reckless."_

Ed grinned wildly. "That's why its so good!"

Al sighed for the millionth time that day, still agreeing to boost his brother over the wall, and a moment later Ed was rolling to his feet on the opposite side, scowling up at the mansion with distaste. Ed made decent money as a State Alchemist and a major in the military, and sure the house they'd just bought in Central was nice -by their standards- it was still pretty modest, and even though Mustang made more as a Colonel, Ed knew he lived in a small townhouse, both of which were nothing compared to the mansion before his eyes.

There was extravagant and then there was  _extravagant._  By this point, Ed had learned the difference between the two. Major Alex Louise Armstrong, the 'Strongarm Alchemist' (Ed, still, to this day, had no  _idea_  if that title had been given to him ironically), came from money _, a lot_  of money. Ed only knew that because when Hawkeye had been taking them to the train station once she had pointed out the mansion they'd driven by as belonging to the Armstrong family.

The fact that Yoki's mansion was bigger than the Armstrongs' was probably the biggest red flag in regards to where all the money in the town was going, especially since Yoki was  _only_ a First Lieutenant.

Ed looked around carefully, but the easiest way in would have to be the front door, and it wasn't as though he could afford to hire around the clock guards, even if he was worried about the townspeople getting aggressive.

He clapped his hands together before tapping a finger on the lock, to get the cogs to line up with a soft crackle of alchemy.

A few months ago, and Ed would've just made his own door -looking cool  _as hell_ , no matter what Al or Mustang said- but Ed had learned the hard way that sometimes subtlety was key. Besides, he didn't want to have to call Mustang and explain to him just why he'd been caught sneaking into a house late into the night; why make your own door when there was one that was perfectly functional right there?

His automail foot always clunked when he moved, it wasn't exactly a problem he could avoid, the only way to keep from being discovered by anyone moving around in the night would be to move slowly and carefully…Ed could totally manage that.

The biggest problem was that he had no idea where the lieutenant would be keeping his paperwork, but it definitely wasn't at the small command post close to the front of town. If a military official was scamming the town they were stationed in, they wouldn't want the documents proving their corruption to just be lying out and about in the command post…no, they'd want  _that_ under lock and key.

Ed's arm creaked slightly when he moved and he could feel something jingle within the gears. Winry was going to  _kill_ him if something was broken again. Of course, it was probably better just to find out if it was anything minor first. He'd take a patch job in Rush Valley than a trip back to Resembool, even though Winry was _literally_  one of the best.

(She'd been absolutely  _raving_  about Rush Valley for as long as she'd been interested in automail, which was a  _really_ long time, and every time Ed had to go back to Resembool to get his arm fixed she'd been begging Granny to let her get an apprenticeship there, over in South City)

Besides, Rush Valley was only a few stops away from Central City and that was where Ed was going to have to go to either accept the promotion to lieutenant colonel or refuse it.

Ed grimaced as he checked every door until he came across a locked one.

_Bingo._

The last time Ed had been in the same room as the Fuhrer he'd aimed a spear at his throat…obviously he hadn't taken it too seriously, since he still gave Ed the title of State Alchemist and took it in stride…but it was still pretty  _awkward._

Ed shut the door behind him, flicking on the light, and looking on file after file…okay, this was probably going to take a while.

* * *

Ed was a criminal, but who was going to be able to prove it?

The deed to the mine was stuck pretty deep in a pile and it took about an hour for Ed to  _actually_  find it. The ink was lead, though, which was a good sign for Ed because he could use alchemy to shift the lettering, which was, of course,  _highly_  illegal, and if Mustang actually knew about it, he'd probably press a hand to his face and sigh about Ed putting him in terrible positions. But a clap of alchemy later and Ed was holding proof that First Lieutenant Yoki had sold the mine back to the town of Youswell for the steep price of… _free of charge._

His teeth bared into a devilish grin. Oh, he bet the lieutenant would _love_  that. So, Ed took the deed and an entire file of incriminating evidence that the military was quite effectively stealing from the people of Youswell.

He was sure that would get him to clam up without too much effort…now to actually get out of the mansion as quietly as he'd entered.

* * *

Those  _bastards,_  they'd burned it to the ground, and yet, somehow, John Halling couldn't help but remain unsurprised. He was just glad that he managed to get everyone out of the inn before it was too late. His son Kyle had gotten lucky with only a small burn on his hand, but better a burn than a life.

The miners and everyone else who had been in the inn when the fire started were now holed up in a spare warehouse with each man getting angrier and John couldn't blame them.

"I've had  _enough!"_

"Even if we all die, I'm going to shoot off that Yoki's head with  _one shot!"_

"Boss!" there was a startled yell and John looked up in surprise as one of his men stumbled through the opening, jabbing a finger out the door, eyes wide. "You aren't gonna believe this!"

John's brow furrowed in confusion and they all piled out of the warehouse to stare in the direction he was pointing and then openly gape, because the inn had been burned to the ground, there was no denying that, but there it stood, bold as brass, like no flame had ever touched it.

John couldn't believe it. He knew the miracles of alchemy, he'd briefly studied it as a younger man, but he knew for a fact that he'd never be able to create something on that scale.

The door was wide open and he could easily make out the boys from earlier, the State Alchemist boy and his steel-clad brother sitting within, the first lounging in a casual way, the second sitting politely straight.

"Did you do this?" John asked in awe.

The State Alchemist boy -Ed, the second had called him he remembered- grinned wildly and full of fire as he jerked a thumb at his brother. "Al did, actually, he's better at the details than I am."

The suit of armor ducked its head almost shyly as everyone returned to the inn they had to so violently leave, remarking on its state in awe.

"We've also got the deed to the mine," Ed added, the grin still in place, "but its gonna cost ya."

John remembered what Al had said earlier about the only way to bribe his brother was with food or with a good alchemy book, and he couldn't help but think that was the case here.

"Name your price," he said, settling opposite the brothers.

"Well…the next train out of Youswell isn't coming until tomorrow…" Ed tapped his lips thoughtfully. "Why don't you give us a room and a morning meal and we'll call it even?"

John couldn't help but balk faintly at that. That didn't seem like a fair trade on Ed's part…didn't he want  _more?_  But…alchemists be thou for the people. Ed's face was fairly open and it didn't seem like a trick.

So, a grin spread across John's face. "Equivalent exchange, yeah? You got yourself a deal."

Ed grinned as he handed over the deed and John looked it over before letting out a sharp bark of laughter. " _Free of charge?_  How did you manage that?"

Ed's grin broadened. "I don't know what you're talking about, that's the way I found it."

John had never been so impressed by someone's underhandedness before, but somehow he got the feeling that it wasn't something new for Ed.

"You never did tell us your names," John pointed out.

"I'm Edward Elric, that's Alphonse." Ed jerked his thumb at his brother who waved helpfully.

John remembered that name. "The Fullmetal Alchemist…the one being called the People's Alchemist?"

Ed shrugged. "Sometimes." He didn't seem too concerned with his reputation, too busy having to turn down beer from the now incredibly exuberant miners that had practically exploded in their excitement.

"What is the meaning of this?" a sharp voice pierced the air and everyone turned to face Lieutenant Yoki and his goons, his thin mustache twitching in irritation.

"We're just celebrating you losing the mine!" James, one of the burliest of John's men shouted from the back.

Yoki sputtered. "I haven't lost the mine,  _you ruffians!"_

"Ya sure?" Ed asked mildly, pointing at the deed in John's hands. "'Cause it says you gave it to the town free of charge, which I think is pretty  _generous_  since you've been stealing from them."

"Who're you?" Yoki demanded full of fire.

Ed took a long swig of his orange juice before reaching down and pulling out the silver pocket watch to indicate his status as a State Alchemist. The blood leeched from Yoki's face and it was  _thrilling_ to watch.

"I'm Major Edward Elric," he said, unimpressed, "the Fullmetal Alchemist, and I'm going to be delivering a lot of paperwork to my CO about this scam you've got going on here…guess you can say goodbye to your military career."

That caused Yoki to turn red with his rage before shouting to his two men: "Get those papers!"

John thought it was best to sit back and just watch the chaos unfold, because several of the strongest miners surged forward to duke it out with the military men, who were subsequently trashed. He was sidetracked briefly by a picture that looked like it had fallen from one of the boys.

It was of them with an older man in the military uniform, dark hair and eyes, looking nothing like them. He was sitting with an exasperated smile with one boy on either side of his shoulder.

"Your father must be very proud of you," he told them, handing the picture over to Ed and Ed startled faintly but without missing a beat, Al said, "He is," as brightly as he could manage.

At least there was one State Alchemist that hadn't sold his soul to the military. John wondered if Ed knew how much pull he actually had by just saying his name alone.

He doubted it.

"Where you boys from?" he asked, ignoring the screams of pain coming from just outside the inn.

Ed's lips twisted and John got the feeling that he'd gotten that question more than once, given his coloring.

"Resembool," he said flatly, almost defensively.

"They have mining over there?"

"Mostly farming," Al said, "we'd never seen a mine like this one before…I think they've got an abandoned mine in Central, though."

"Must be strange being a couple country boys working in the city," John offered.

Ed shrugged casually. "Could be worse," he said, standing up and yawning, "could've actually been murdered by that assassin when I was twelve."

John balked as the kid walked away without even attempting to explain that. Well, who had ever said that being a State Alchemist was easy? Even for a kid like Ed?

* * *

"We could easily just get off at Resembool," Al pointed out. They'd boarded the first train out and practically the entire town of Youswell had come to see them off, shouting goodbyes and ruffling Ed's hair badly enough that he had to re-braid it on the train. (Ed still wasn't a fan of people touching his hair, but they were excited and happy, so he'd give them that)

Ed felt a spike of fear go down his spine at the thought of that, at the thought of Winry wielding her wrench with deadly accuracy.

"I just want to make it to fifteen," Ed grumbled, sinking lower into his seat. "Is that too much to ask?"

"You're too scared of Winry," Al sighed. "You _know_ she doesn't want to kill you."

"That's debatable." Ed grimaced. "Remember when we stole her wrench when we were eight and seven and you threw me under the bus and she nearly killed me?"

"She didn't nearly kill you, Brother, she just knocked you out."

Ed wasn't sure how concerned he should be that Al didn't consider being knocked out at eight by a wrench to be a big deal.

" _Resembool Station,"_  echoed overhead and Al looked out on the window to the rolling green grass that he and Ed had once run through when they were younger. If he tried hard enough he could remember the texture of the grass against his bare feet.

Some days he had to wonder…soul alchemy was an unknown…wasn't it possible to manipulate memories? And then he felt so ashamed for considering it when Ed was always so willing to rip himself apart for Al.

"Brother," he said suddenly and Ed hummed, not looking up from his doodling -Ling related, Al was sure-, "Winry just came on the train."

"Sure, Al- wait,  _what?"_  Ed jolted in his seat, forcing himself up onto his knees to gape at the girl with blonde hair and blue eyes that has stepped onto the train with her toolbox at her shoulder. "Oh,  _crap."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I half-hate, half-like the Youswell episode, but it kind of made sense to do, so here we are. Ed's crushing hard on Ling and is on his way to Rush Valley with Al and Winry…hm…who could they run into there? ;)


	15. Magnetic Attraction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looks like everyone enjoyed the Papa!Roy moment despite the guy not even actually being in the scene, I guess he's lucky like that. And Ed doodling Ling's clan symbol was easily one of the cutest things he's done to date in regards to his crush on Ling, but, worry not, there's always more.
> 
> The Rush Valley arc in canon is not the one you're going to be reading about in here, the pregnancy is a year away and Ed and Al have things to do, so they're not sticking around long.
> 
> For all the lesbian Winry fans, who are no doubt thirsty

"What're  _you_  doing here?" Ed demanded loudly. Luckily, the train was mostly empty, but Al elbowed him with a low " _Ed!"_

Winry's eyebrows rose in surprise at the sight of them, grinning as she approached only to narrow her eyes at Ed, jumping to his automail arm. Ed shifted as far away from her as he could manage. "It's a free country, isn't it? Nothing wrong with getting on a train, is there,  _Edward?"_

Ed grumbled under his breath as she settled beside Al. "So, what've you guys been up to? Any closer to getting your bodies back?"

"Actually," Al said brightly, "we might have something on that front."

"Really?" Winry asked interested before shooting her arm out and snagging Ed's automail arm.

" _Hey!"_

She shook it and something rattled inside of it. "Did that screw come loose completely? I  _told you_  to come to Resembool  _before_  that happened! You're lucky that the nothing else came loose!"

"Why're you getting so mad? It's not like I  _completely destroyed it!"_  Ed fired back.

"You're  _useless!"_

"He didn't want to bother you so he was just going to get a patch job in Rush Valley," Al offered helpfully, or incriminatingly, definitely one of the two.

" _Al!"_  Ed snapped in outrage.

Winry's lips twisted. "I'll  _bet_  he was…all right, hand it over, Ed."

"What?  _No!"_  Ed hugged the automail limb to himself like he was afraid she was going to literally going to take it off him.

Winry arched an eyebrow. "You were going to get it looked at anyways,  _besides_ , I can probably figure it out faster and get it fixed before you even get to Rush Valley." Rush Valley was still a couple of hours out, so it wasn't like any of them would be doing too much to start with.

Ed pursed his lips in annoyance before finally sighing and relenting; it wasn't as though Winry wasn't one of the best.

After a minute of fiddling, she popped it off and settled back in her seat, fiddling with a screwdriver over the metal plating. "So, anything new going on with you guys?"

"I don't know…should we tell her about  _Ling?"_  Al asked his brother in an all-too-knowing voice and Ed's face flared with heat, much to Winry's surprise as the train pulled out of the station.

" _No!_  Absolutely  _not!"_  He shook his head violently, his face glowing like the setting sun.

" _Ooh,_  that sounds interesting." Winry's eyes gleamed as she looked from Ed to Al. "Who's this Ling, Al?"

"Ling's a Xingese prince who thinks Ed's  _very cute,"_  Al informed her with an almost sly glance towards his brother who tried to hide his face behind his journal, though doing it one-handed wasn't quite as effective in hiding how much his cheeks were burning. "Actually, that was the first thing he said to you, wasn't it, Ed?"

" _Shut up!"_  Ed squeaked from behind the journal.

"He was doodling Ling's clan symbol in his journal yesterday," Al confided.

" _Al!"_

" _Aw,_  that's so cute!" Winry grinned widely. "Where's he now?"

"He had to go back to Xing," Ed muttered, lacking the strength to speak at a normal level, apparently. "He just came here with Fu to get Lanfan."

Winry's brow furrowed in confusion.

"There was this child trafficking ring that I helped take down," Ed had to explain as she shook his automail arm to get the loose screw out. "I ended up following the guys in charge into the Eastern Desert at the same time Lanfan got kidnapped from Xing pretending to be Ling, so they were planning to hold her hostage in Amestris, that's how we ran into each other."

"You saved her?" Winry wasn't really surprised; that was what Ed and Al did.

But Ed scoffed. "Lanfan saved  _herself,_  she's scary tough. I gave her a ride back to Amestris and helped her cross the border illegally so she could get her broken arm looked at."

Winry burst into laughter. She didn't know why but somehow that was even  _more_  funny. "What'd Mustang say to that?" He was a Colonel, after all, he shouldn't've really been totally down with his subordinate helping someone cross the border illegally.

"He pretends he didn't hear anything about it," Ed snorted. "Not that anyone could prove they were even here in the first place…so she calls her grandfather and he crosses the desert with Ling and of course _he_  passes out and the first thing he does is call me cute and then pass out  _again."_

Winry snorted and Al giggled.

"And then Al leaves me with like ninety-pounds of delirium in a five-pound bag and straight up  _vanishes,_  leaving me to lug his ass to the hospital—"

"But, Brother," Al said so innocently that Winry knew it had to be good, "you looked like you were enjoying yourself…you both looked pretty  _cozy."_

Heat flared up in Ed's cheeks again and he decided that the best way to hide his face to completely twist his body where he was laying spread across the entire bench to bury his face in the seat cushions. "I hate you both, and I want to  _die,"_  he muffled there, but he was certain that they both heard it, regardless.

"Aw, I think he's shy!"

Ed flipped her off without even turning to face her.

Ling had, quite possibly, ruined him for men. He wasn't used to anyone paying that kind of attention to him. He'd met a general or two whose eyes had lingered on him, of course (he'd decided not to tell either Al or Mustang about that, which was probably for the best), and Mustang gave him and Al his fullest attention, but that was always with a bit of a paternal air that Ed was slowly coming to terms with.

None of them had been like Ling's. Ling's attention made Ed choke for breath and want to avert his eyes or never look anywhere else again. It was like… _magnetic_  attraction, like drowning and finally learning how to breathe.

Ed didn't understand  _any of it._  He didn't understand how a tingle could've run down his spine when Ling had held his automail hand, gently roving his fingers over the steel with interest. He didn't understand why being so close to Ling had made him so flustered.

And he really didn't understand how cute Ling was…it was un- _fucking_ -real. He had that cute head tilt when he talked and his looks? Someone should go ahead and _kill_  Ed because next time he saw Ling he  _definitely_  wasn't going to be able to handle how flirty he was.

" _Ugh,"_  Ed groaned. "I'm so  _gay."_

"Same, dude."

Ed rolled back to glare at Winry, but it was useless, being a lesbian was a point of pride for Winry. Ed didn't think he'd ever met someone so grateful that they'd never be attracted to men. ("I'm sure you and Al are super broken up," Winry had said when they were nine and Ed had stared blankly at her, never having had much inclination for romance, let alone romantic feelings for the girl who was probably the closest to being his sister than anything else, and thinking about Al who was generally more preoccupied with avoiding bullies due to his shy and soft nature than thinking about people being cute, not that anyone cared too much about that at that age.)

"But really, Ed? A  _prince?"_  Winry arched an eyebrow. "How much are you trying to one-up me?"

"I'm sure you'll find your soulmate before either of us," Ed replied with a roll of his eyes, "don't worry so much."

Winry ignored that, returning her attention instead to the arm. Ed had never cared too much about soulmates, even now she doubted he cared. Sure, this Ling might be cute, but Al still came first, Al was his  _priority._  She both admired that and felt sad about it.

"What're you doing on the train anyways, Winry?" Al asked curiously, letting her tinker for a few moments in silence.

"Oh, same as you," Winry grinned. "Granny finally okayed me to go to Rush Valley for an apprenticeship! She gave me a letter to give someone named —" Winry had to check the name on the letter briefly. "—Atelier Garfiel."

"That's great news!" Al clapped his hands together and Ed nodded fervently. Getting an apprenticeship in Rush Valley had to be a dream come true for Winry. Ed and Al were always expanding what they new with alchemy, there wasn't a reason that Winry shouldn't do the same.

"Thanks! I'm really excited about it!" She looked it, but then her eyes shifted towards Ed and her grin turned positively devilish. "It's a good thing you're here, Ed, I can use you as an example!"

"Of what?" Ed eyed her warily, getting the feeling that he wasn't going to like where this was going.

"Your arm and leg!" Winry waved his arm with emphasis, which probably wasn't the best idea, since she was still in the middle of fixing it in the first place, but Ed thought it best not to comment. "Proof of my  _skills!_  Maybe if he sees your arm and leg he'll take me on!"

Ed had the mental image of him stripped down to his underwear so that both his arm and his leg could be easily seen. Ed really didn't like that idea.

He didn't have the time or energy to voice that because Winry had cheerfully said "All right, all done, ready for me to put it back on?"

Ed grimaced. Every single time, no matter how hard he tried, he passed out. There had yet to be a point where reconnecting the nerves didn't send a flare of pain through his body so strong that it made him pass out instantly. Of course, he'd actually broken his leg apart a few months ago, and that had been just as bad; Al had to carry him to safety when he'd passed out in an alley.

"Better get it over with," Ed decided with a sigh, pulling himself up into a sitting position as Winry could sit beside him, fitting the catches into place. He gritted his teeth together, ready for the pain.

"One, two,  _three!"_  Winry reconnected the nerves. Ed's eyes blew wide, his spine stiffened, and then he pitched forward, with only Al moving fast enough to catch him and settle him back against the cushions. Winry threw his coat over him as he breathed in and out evenly, his eyes fluttering beneath his eyelids.

"He'll be up and about in an hour," Winry decided after checking his pulse and his breathing, nothing seemed abnormal, or at least, didn't seem too abnormal. That was usually how long it too Ed to come around after the nerves were reconnected. "So, you guys have been doing pretty well?"

"Mostly." She could almost hear Al's smile. "We're doing a lot of research into Alkahestry and Xerxes, though, we think there might be some value in that."

"Oh, yeah, didn't Aunt Trisha like hearing about Xerxes, too?" Winry had a hazy memory of one time where she'd slept the night over at the Elrics and had woken up in the middle of the night to toddle into the room. Uncle Van had been telling her stories by the light of the fire and Aunt Trisha had settled Winry on her lap while listening to Uncle Van talk enraptured. Winry didn't remember much about what he'd said, just the tone, the soft and somber way he spoke, like remembering something that was long gone.

Al's helmet creaked as he turned to look at her. "I- _what?"_  he asked in total confusion. "Mom was interested in Xerxes?"

"Maybe?" Winry scratched her head. "I was really young and its kind of hazy…" Winry thought there'd been something about Xerxes, though. "I think your dad told her something about a place called…Persepolis? He said into was the true center of Xerxes."

"What else do you remember?" Al had never sounded quite so eager.

"Not that much," Winry shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "I drifted off after a while."

Al remembered less when they were kids, but he was absolutely certain that Mom completely understood any of the alchemy jargon they'd said in front of her. The first time Ed had attempted alchemy and it didn't work he'd become so flustered and upset that he almost burst into tears but then Mom had come along and helped him correct the array.

"You had all the parts right, see?" she'd pointed out kindly, kneeling down beside him, fingers darting over the various elements Ed had scrawled out. "You just need to space them out a bit more evenly."

She'd rubbed the chalk off Hohenheim's wood floor and shown how to correct it and sat beside Ed as the air crackled with electricity.

Talking about alchemy at the table had become common place after that.

How much about alchemy had Mom even known, though? All those books in the study…were they just Hohenheim's, or were they hers as well? The older they got, Al felt the less they knew about their parents. Hohenheim had the excuse of just disappearing, but they'd had Mom until she died.

("What a tragedy, to die so young, to leave her children so young," was murmured in Resembool, but, unbeknownst to Ed and Al there were others that looked on that illness with a suspicion.)

What did they really even know about Trisha Elric? They knew she'd lived in North City when she was little before the family moved out to Resembool and that she'd still had trouble with the summer heat, because she'd always wave them off when they wanted her to come outside and play with them, fanning herself, flushed in the face.

"Oh, just because you're from the desert, doesn't mean we all are, dear!" she'd once snarked at Hohenheim, making him chuckle faintly, even if there'd been something in his face that Al had thought was… _off_ , something  _sad,_  something  _somber._

Her family was all dead, or she was estranged, though Al couldn't imagine anyone being estranged from Mom, she was far too nice. She'd never talked about any family, hardly at all, only talking about them when she talked about when she was a child…from what Al could remember, she was an only child and her father had been a soldier at Fort Briggs.

But he didn't think there was much else she'd told them about herself… _was there?_  They'd been born in North City, that much he'd remembered, and shortly after he was born Mom packed up her bags and she and Hohenheim decided to take them back to Resembool, but he was to young to remember that, Ed probably was too; it was a long time ago.

He definitely remembered the look on her face -closed off and lined with tension- as she patted the top of Ed's head. "One day we'll talk about your father," she had said after too many questions after he'd left.

She died two weeks later.

"Winry?"

Winry hummed.

"Do you ever feel like you didn't really know your parents that well?" Al asked her curiously before abruptly realizing that maybe he shouldn't have asked; Winry had lost her parents too, not like Ed and Al, but it didn't take the sting away.

But Winry considered his words. "Yeah," she finally sighed.

* * *

Ed's dreams were a mess of confusion, but that was nothing new, it was almost more preferable to dreaming about the Gate or the  _thing_  they'd transmuted.

It was like a jumble of memories that Ed couldn't make sense of, it was like being dragged underwater as a wave struck, not sure what was up or down.

In the end Ed just sank down deep and drowned until he jerked awake with a start.

"Brother? Are you all right?" Al asked quietly and Ed scrubbed aggressively at his face.

"Fine," he muttered, making sure to keep his voice low when he saw that Winry was napping against Al's side. "Just a weird dream."

He sat up, testing his automail like Winry always had him do after she reconnected the nerves.

"Brother…do you think knowing about Xerxes is really dangerous?" Al asked him suddenly.

"Maybe," Ed said quietly. His thoughts drifted to Lieutenant Hawkeye, thinking about what she'd said about her father being intrigued by it. "Why?"

"Winry…Winry said something about hearing  _Mom_  talk about it with Hohenheim," Al said softly and Ed jolted.

"When was that?" Ed asked, startled.

"Dunno? Sometime before he left and Mom got really sick?" Al wasn't really sure and he doubted Winry was either.

Ed cupped his chin thoughtfully, his brow creasing. Thinking too much about his mother - _about what they'd done_ \- made him feel like there were knives in his chest, but Ed had to remove himself to think clearly. "So was Hawkeye's dad…the Lieutenant said he died a little after Mustang joined the military…"

"You don't think it's a coincidence that no one can find anything on Xerxes and the people that do end up dead, do you?" Al sounded so concerned and Ed felt for him. Nothing about the path back to their bodies was easy, but nothing was without sacrifice, Ed and Al had learned that the hard way. Al was hard to kill but Ed was still flesh and blood, and it wasn't like no one had gotten close to killing him before. But Ed wasn't too keen on a repeat of that experience.

"Maybe…we should try to keep on the down low to be safe," Ed sighed.

"But what about going to Xerxes?" Al pressed. "We're still thinking about doing that, right?"

"Of course, we are, Al," Ed scoffed, "we need to get answers somewhere and that's probably the best option…we just need to make it  _look like_  we're not."

The balls of light that were Al's eyes narrowed into slits in his helmet. "You're not very good at being subtle, Ed."

"What?  _Of course, I am!_  Take that  _back!"_

"Nu-uh!"

* * *

Rush Valley was everything Winry wanted and then some. It was like coming off the train and entering a  _dream,_  which made her wonder if she was even awake.

"Pinch me," she told Ed in complete awe and Ed rolled his eyes, poking her in the ribs instead. " _Hey!"_

"I heard 'poke me'," he said innocently with that shit-eating grin of his and oh, was he _so_  full of shit. "You're lucky the train doesn't even leave for another hour, is all I'm saying."

He shifted uncomfortably, straightening the glove over his automail arm. He didn't like to draw much attention to it, from what Winry could remember.

"You don't have to come with me," Winry said finally, "I just thought, you know, it would be a good way to showcase my skills."

Ed scowled. "If it gets you the job, then I'll do it, but not in front of everyone."

Winry positively beamed before grabbing his wrist with one hand and Al's with another, dragging them forward. Al was intrigued by the different types of automail on display, though Ed was marginally less enthused by all the modifications clear to see. Ed liked his automail the way it was, mostly because he could easily hide it under his sleeve and people didn't really notice it initially. Winry played to that desire when she'd crafted his arm and leg the first time.

"There it is!" Winry jabbed a finger in the direction of the curved lettering above the shop in question.

Mr. Garfiel, it turned out, was a man with eyeliner game  _on point_ and suspenders that he probably didn't need to keep his pants up. Honestly, Ed was more impressed with his eyeliner. Apparently, he had only met Granny a few short years ago but had impressed her with his style of automail and ability to adapt to specifics that clients requested, something Winry had a lot of trouble with.

He chatted with her for about a good half hour, about how Granny was, how she'd gotten started with automail, what changes she'd made since she'd begun, probably trying to gauge if she was a good choice for apprenticeship.

It was about that time that Mr. Garfiel came to admire Ed's arm.

"Would you consider this arm sturdy?" he asked Ed.

"Well, I fight with it and unless it's a really bad fight, it holds up," Ed snorted before he was coached into a few exercises to showcase how the different plating worked together to function adequately.

"Its very well made," Mr. Garfiel complimented and Winry's face glowed with pleasure. It was one thing for the Elrics and Granny to compliment her work, but it was another thing for someone else entirely to do it. "I think you would be incredibly well suited for an apprenticeship in my shop."

" _Really?"_  Winry bounced on the balls of her feet, pure delight oozing from her entire being. "Oh,  _thank you_ so much! I have to tell Granny!"

Mr. Garfiel watched her run off with a bit of bemusement. "Your friend is very excitable."

"Well, she loves automail," Al conceded with a shrug.

* * *

"—and he gave me the apprenticeship right off the bat!" Winry jabbered away without even drawing breath, she didn't think that she'd even given Granny the chance to talk since she'd picked up.

" _Well, that's good to hear,"_  Granny's dry voice came through the phone dryly.

"It was probably a good thing that Ed and Al were on the train, I used Ed's arm as an example of my skills," Winry replied brightly.

" _Ed and Al were on the train and didn't stop by?"_

Winry sniggered. "They were hoping to get a patch job in Rush Valley instead of coming home."

" _Ah,"_  Granny said in realization,  _"Ed was hoping to avoid the wrench."_

Winry nearly cackled. "It was just a screw loose, but I got it sorted out on the train, no worries."

" _Mmhm…are you going to want me to sent some of your things to Rush Valley now that you'll be staying there for an extended visit?"_

Winry had a few days' worth of clothes tucked in her bag, but Granny was right, that wouldn't last her for very long.

"Please and thank you!"

" _Have fun, dear, and learn as much as you can,"_  Granny told her.

"I will!" Winry promised, hanging up from her and running into someone as she stepped back. "Oh, sorry!"

The girl teetered for a brief moment before righting herself and Winry caught a glance of sunlight shining off of her automail leg through a hole in her overalls. This girl, she realized with horror, was  _unbelievably cute_. Her blue eyes were so dark they were almost black, her skin was darker than Ed and Al's, and  _holy hell_ , the muscles of her arms…were they even  _real?_  "No harm, no foul."

Winry was so  _gay._

Then her heart positively stopped. "Oh,  _holy fuck,"_  she said, shooting an arm out to grab the girl's wrist to see the tight figure eight there and then brushing the hair back from her left shoulder, where its twin sat.

The girl's eyes glowed and she brushed her fingers over the mark. It was electric and magnetic and Winry tried hard not to shudder. "Paninya," she said to Winry.

"Winry," Winry replied, her throat suddenly dry, "oh my god, you're even better than I imagined."

Paninya laughed and Winry turned beet red. "Oh,  _fuck,_  was that out loud?"

"Don't worry," Paninya assured her, her smile broad, "I wasn't expecting my soulmate to be this cute either."

Winry could practically feel the heat coming off her cheeks but it didn't come close to matching how impossibly wide and bright her smile was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trisha's backstory is so different and so interesting but it'll be a couple of chapters before you see the boys actually figuring anything out about it. There was almost a HUGE canon change, but I realized it might be a little difficult to pull off, so I scrapped it, but Trisha is definitely an interesting character to write in this fic.


	16. Lieutenant Colonel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ed's gay, Winry's gay, and Al's just sitting there trying to be a normal teen in a metal body, just trying to live his life. There's a lot of excitement about Trisha's character, which is good, because she has a really interesting past.

Ed and Al lost Winry somehow in the sea of automail mechanics and amputees, but were either of them really all that surprised? No,  _definitely_ not. Ed had to literally pry himself away from three automail mechanics that were incredibly interested in his automail, and one that wanted him to upgrade his to a bulkier and stronger model, none of which made Ed too happy. There were too many people touching him and Ed might be a bit touch-starved -which was absolutely  _nothing_  compared to Al- but he wasn't a fan of people grabbing his arm and trying to get a look at the automail or try to convince him to change it.

"The train's leaving soon," Al said in worry, "we'll miss saying goodbye to her if we can't find her."

"She's gotta be here some-  _oh_! There she is!" Ed pointed through the crowd to where the train was sitting at the train station, ready to leave in a few minutes. "She's—"

They both stared. Winry was sitting rather close to another girl, their heads close and smiles painted on their faces. They could easily see Winry's flush.

"I swear, she must be the luckiest girl we know," Ed told Al. "Comes to Rush Valley for an apprenticeship and winds up with a girlfriend."

Al laughed. "I think its  _sweet!"_

Ed shrugged careless as he and Al strolled up to the bench where Winry was waving her arms emphatically. The girl she was with was pretty, but then so was Winry, and Winry's hands were smoothing over her automail legs with intrigue and awe while the girl tried not look too pleased about the attention.

"Hey, Win, we're heading out," he said right next to her and Winry jolted in surprise, making the girl look up.

"Guys!" She completely disregarded what Ed had said to tug them both forward in excitement. "This is Paninya! She's my  _soulmate!"_

Paninya smiled broadly and waved, allowing them to see the figure eight on the inside of her wrist. "Hi!"

"The little twerp is Ed and the sweet one is Al," Winry told her, "they're my best friends."

"WHO YOU CALLING LITTLE TWERP YOU—!" Ed's temper sparked high and hot and Al had to literally lift his brother off the ground to keep him from strangling Winry, even while she was laughing.

"Cool," Paninya said, giving them another little wave.

"Its nice to meet you," Al said, far kinder than Ed, "I'm sorry about Ed, he's got a short temper."

Ed's eyebrow twitched. "What was  _that?_  You wanna  _die_ , Al?"

"Ed's a menace," Winry told Paninya conversationally as Ed continued to threaten his brother with murder, which Al easily pointed out that he had yet to best him in a fight so the chances of Ed killing Al were pretty slim.

"They seem like fun," Paninya said brightly watching them squabble violently enough for people around them to opt to give them a wide berth.

"They are," Winry grinned only to see them jolt at the last call for passengers. "Bye, guys! Don't forget to call every now and then!"

"Yeah, yeah!"

"We promise!"

They barely made it onto the train to wave from a window.

"They won't call," Winry rolled her eyes, turning back to Paninya, "they're useless like that."

"We can't all be perfect," Paninya grinned and she was looking at Winry.

Predictably, Winry blushed.

* * *

Ed always thought he looked like an idiot when he was in the Amestrian military uniform, and nothing had changed, but at least no one questioned why he would want to use the call center which were on all trains and restricted to military personnel, and, even  _more_ thankfully, there was no one in the room to listen to him call Eastern Command.

He'd called Mustang the previous night to inform him about Yoki and his scam of the Youswell people, but maybe he was antsy about being in the same room as the Fuhrer.

" _Two calls in two days, I must be a lucky guy."_

"Oh, shut up," Ed grumbled to hide his embarrassment. "I've got a file on Yoki's dealings, am I supposed to just hop on a train after I'm done here and bring it to you in person?" Ed had left the file in his suitcase with Al, who was getting steadily more excited the closer they got to Central, mostly because…the  _cat._  Al was looking more forward to the cat than anything else.

" _Ah, don't bother with that, we'll be seeing each other rather soon, anyways,"_  Mustang waved him off.

Ed frowned in confusion. "What are you going on about?"

" _We've been approved for the transfer to Central,"_  Mustang's tone was caught somewhere between proud and smug…which was typical of him. He'd been vying for that transfer to Central for as long as Ed had known him.

"Oh!" Ed blinked. "Congrats." Was there anything else he could say to that? He doubted it.

" _Thank you,"_  Mustang nearly preened on the other end, the utter _peacock_.  _"Of course, there's still things to finalize on both ends, so it might take a week or two for us to actually make it to Central…but you remember Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes? The one that worked in Investigations and came to take your statement after the Chopper incident?"_

Ed felt the involuntary shudder down his spine at the memory of that man, his crazed eyes. "Your soulmate? Yeah, I remember him, why?"

" _He's agreed to pick you boys up from the train station, but you can give him the file; he'll see that it gets to the right place."_

"Oh, okay."

" _And if he shows you a lot of pictures of his daughter, don't be surprised,"_  Mustang added with just a hint of exasperation.

"Does, uh, does that happen a lot?"

There was a lamenting sigh on the other end that was eaten up by static.  _"More than you can imagine."_

"Uh…okay?" Ed scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

" _And remember to be respectful of the Fuhrer,"_  Mustang added quickly, like he was afraid that Ed was going to hang up on him,  _"mind your manners, like you're dealing with Lieutenant Hawkeye and she's annoyed."_

" _What was that, sir?"_  Ed could just barely make out in the background.

" _Well, he's never respected me, I needed someone that he does!"_

" _Sir, you need better analogies."_

Ed couldn't help the smile that warmed across his face, it was almost like being back in the office with them, watching Mustang quail under Hawkeye's stare, her hand on her gun, ready to threaten at any time.

"Thanks," Ed said before Mustang could be murdered by his right hand, "love you, bye!"

He slammed the phone down, a flush creeping up his throat as his words only just caught up with him.  _"Fuck,"_  he muttered to himself, putting his head in his hands, though it did nothing to ease the heat flooding through his face.

It was the kind of quick response that he would shout to Mom on the way out the door, thoughtless and not thinking twice. Ed had only ever told his mother and Al that he loved them…and maybe Hohenheim a few times before he left, but never anyone else.

Stranger still…Ed didn't think that he minded too much. Mustang had a picture of him and Al on his desk, he called them 'his boys' to other MPs (Ed and Al had overheard him and stopped counting after the fifth time), he practically forced them to check in once in awhile if the mission they were on was going to take an extended amount of time (usually acquired through Al who promised for Ed's sake), he ruffled Ed's hair and patted the top of Al's helmet.

Ed scratched his cheek feeling sheepish and awkward. He'd sort it out later.

"What'd the Colonel say?" Al asked when he returned to his seat.

"He said his soulmate is gonna pick us up and we can leave him with the paperwork instead of just bringing it in to Eastern Command," Ed said, his attention focused on a loose string he'd found at the end of his sleeve.

"Oh, Lieutenant Colonel Hughes?" Al leaned forward with interest. "I didn't really talk with him last time…what was he like?"

Ed furrowed his brow, sinking lower in his seat. That had been a bad day. He still had nightmares about bleeding out on the office floor, nightmares of leaving Al alone, trapped in that suit of armor.

What a terrible type of immortality to possess.

"He was all right, I guess," Ed finally decided, "not like the Colonel much, though."

"What d'you mean?" Al's head canted faintly.

Ed's first thought was that Mustang didn't seem as soft-hearted as Hughes…but that wasn't quite right. He'd seen how Mustang was with Hawkeye, distinctly softer than he was with his other men even though they never brushed their shoulders when they walked, or spoke sweetly to one another…there was never anything unprofessional about them. He remembered how Mustang patted the tops of his and Al's heads (having to coax Al into bending down), and he knew he'd carried him up the stairs after the incident with his soulmark.

Mustang was soft, just not like Hughes.

"I dunno…more easy-going, I guess." Ed shrugged. "Apparently he's got a daughter he won't shut up about."

* * *

Central City was a lot like East City and Ed remembered being startled by it the first time he'd come there for the State Alchemist Exam and being completely thrown off because not even Dublith was as busy as Central was.

Ed almost regretted getting a house in Central, but at least the busyness of the streets appeared to be centered at the train station.

"Yo, Elric Brothers!"

Ed recognized the voice and the person it was coming from. Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes hadn't changed much in the year that Ed hadn't seen him; eager green eyes behind rectangular frames, dark hair slicked back with a single forelock hanging free, with a short scruffy beard.

"Lieutenant Colonel Hughes," Ed said about as conversationally as he could manage when they finally made it through the crowd to reach his side.

"Hey, there, Ed, doing better?" Hughes winked and Ed narrowed his eyes, wondering how much Mustang had been carrying tales.

"All right," Ed conceded, before jerking a thumb towards Al. "I dunno if you actually met Al last time, but this is my little brother, Alphonse."

"Hello!" Al said brightly, giving Hughes a little wave.

"Hello, Al, yes, I remember your brother worrying about leaving you alone for too long." Hughes smiled broadly and Ed pressed his hand against his face as Al laughed. "Heard you two need a lift to Central Command?"

"I do," Ed corrected, "Al just wants to be dropped off at the house."

Confusion spread across Hughes' face briefly, then his eyebrows rose with dawning realization, snapping his fingers. "Oh, that's right! Roy said you guys got a place over here!"

"Does the Bastard Colonel tell you everything?"

" _Ed!"_  Al admonished, nudging his shoulder.

Hughes grinned widely. "What can I say, I like to pry and Roy's more talkative about you boys than he is about himself."

" _Really?"_  they said as one, surprise clear. Mustang didn't seem like the type to talk more about anything.

"Well, not as much as I talk about my dear Elicia!" Hughes practically bubbled as he whipped out a picture of a baby that looked somewhere between the ages of one and two, with green eyes his exact color and brown hair that she must've inherited from her mother. She was waving cheerfully at the camera and watching Hughes coo over the picture Ed finally understood the warning Mustang had given them. "Just look at her! Almost two years of utter cuteness!"

Ed wondered if it was possible for someone to explode at perceived cuteness, but he supposed that Hughes would be the first to try to.

They had to endure exactly ten minutes of Hughes shoving his picture in their faces before they finally made it to the car.

"So, moving to Central? That's a big step," Hughes cast a glance towards Ed (Al had been relegated to the back since he was the only one that could fit back there, forcing Ed to sit in the front with Hughes). "You don't seem to like the city very much."

Ed didn't, not really. Honestly, he and Al preferred the slums of the city to the cities themselves. But that was where the Ishvalans were. Ed and Al had long since grown used to not being considered true Amestrians, their skin sun-kissed, their eyes golden to match hair almost the same color. No one in Amestris had that color for eyes, it wasn't an Amestrian color, and the color of their skin was almost as dark as the Ishvalans.

In Resembool, most people didn't care who they were or who they looked like. Ed and Al had grown up with Ishvalan children in their classrooms and working in the fields and fixing roofs and offering vegetables in stalls at the market. Most people in Resembool were the honest kind, who worked to eat, and they didn't care too much about the color of your skin. Resembool was close to Ishval and had suffered during the war, but most people in Resembool had been against the war that opening its doors to refugees had never been an issue.

The only people that seemed to take offense were the ones passing through from the big cities, they were the ones with the big opinions about how people should look and act in Amestris.

Ed had stomped on the foot of one man that had made Al cry by acting like he was diseased; the man in question had received a very cold reception from the people of Resembool who knew of Al's kind nature during his stay there.

Ed had met a vast collection of very strange and very different people in his search for the Philosopher's Stone, but by far the most intriguing were the Ishvalans.

Honestly, Ed had lost too much faith in a higher power that it was awing and incredibly humbling to see the Ishvalans still possess so much faith in their goddess, Ishvala.

"After the war, how could you still believe?" Ed had asked one of the Ishvalan men in Resembool on one of the rare occasions that he'd come back for maintenance, a farmer named Gerah.

"Faith has always been important to my people…no matter the deeds of men, my people still thrive with Ishvala's blessing," Gerah told Ed. "A broken body is not a broken spirit or a broken soul. I don't believe that everything happens for a reason, I can't believe that anymore—" Gerah's sister had been killed in the war with his parents. "—but I do believe in peace and justice, and one day this country will have to acknowledge what it did to its own people."

Ed had frowned then in confusion.

"There were no free men in that war, why don't you ask your Hero of Ishval if he even enjoyed a second of his time there?"

Ed had never asked. He'd thought about it, but it was too personal, too prying to consider, and Mustang had enough nightmares and PTSD that he could guess the answer was 'no'.

The War of Ishval was a sticky situation for everyone involved, that much Ed could tell, but his parents had moved to Resembool right before everything really got heated in Ishval, so he didn't know all that much about it, and neither Mustang nor Hawkeye talked hardly at all about it.

"It has its perks," Ed decided finally, just barely remembering that Hughes had asked him something.

* * *

Hughes' had wished Ed luck when he dropped him off at the front of Central Command, taking the file on Yoki's dealings off Ed's hands before shooing him off.

A few short minutes later, Ed found himself before the ruler of Amestris.

It was  _awkward_ , there was no denying that, but the Fuhrer seemed ironically very approachable.

Ed saluted, as was expected of him, taking Mustang's advice and being respectful, like if Hawkeye was in front of him, debating on shooting him (she wouldn't actually shoot him, but the fear was  _very real)._

"Ah, Fullmetal!" Fuhrer Bradley said with a kind smile.

("King Bradley is a snake," Mom had once said, late in the night to Hohenheim, anger burning cold. "I don't trust snakes.")

Ed was more inclined to trust her judgment than anyone else's, and it left him feeling on edge.

"I hope your trip was uneventful."

Ed thought about Winry's bright face to match Paninya's.

"Pretty much," he conceded. "Colonel -Mustang (Ed had to pause so he wouldn't slip up and say Colonel Bastard in front of the  _goddamn_  Fuhrer of Amestris) told me I'd need to come here in person to tell you if I wanted to accept the promotion or not."

"And?" Fuhrer Bradley probed.

There was a bet going on in the office about if Ed was going to take the promotion or not. Mustang, Hawkeye, and Falman all thought he would, but Breda, Havoc, and Fuery doubted it; Ed didn't know if he was annoyed or not about it.

Ed had considered his options, especially since his talk with Hawkeye about taking Al into consideration.

"I've decided to accept it," he said at long last.

The Fuhrer nodded approvingly. "I'm glad." He handed over a small box and Ed took it, opening it to see two stars -one to go on each shoulder- and a line of ranking pins. "There is something I'd like you to be a part of, if you're open to it."

Ed arched an eyebrow, confusion splashed across his face.

"The State Alchemist Exam is upcoming in a few weeks," Fuhrer Bradley explained, "and I'd like you to be one of the proctors."

Yeah, _that_  would go over well. Having a proctor that was at least half the age of the applicants (perhaps more, because Ed definitely remembered a man with a white beard at his) was a  _great_  idea.

But,  _then again_ …Lieutenant Colonel at fourteen had never been done, State Alchemist and Major at twelve had never been done. And alchemy was his strong suit, it made  _sense_  for him to be a proctor.

Ed two years ago would have been arrogant enough to want to shove his accomplishments in the faces of prospective State Alchemists, but time had tempered him, ironically enough. That was probably mostly Mustang's influence, Mustang and his team, and nearly being killed had probably also helped too.

It was hard to think yourself above God when someone almost succeeds in assassinating you, when the last thing you remembered before waking up in the hospital was  _drowning in a pool of your own blood._

But Ed told the Fuhrer none of that, instead he said, "I'd be happy to, sir."

"Good, good! And there's something else I need of you before you go."

Ed felt a spike of unease as the Fuhrer reached into his desk to withdraw a pile of papers. He was starting to understand why Mustang hated paperwork so much.

"I have twenty-six requests for transfers from various generals, all vying to have you under their command in the stead of Colonel Mustang," the Fuhrer explained.

"Oh." Ed blinked. Mustang had said a few generals would've preferred the up-and-coming State Alchemist to be under their command instead. "Uh, I'm happy where I am."

"Not eager for a change of pace?" Fuhrer Bradley's single eye seemed to gleam and Ed felt uneasy.

"No," he said. "I like where I am."

A few minutes later, he left the room on certain ground until he heard the Fuhrer say "Its always a pleasure to have an Elric in the military."

That left him uncertain and confused and Ed struggled to not let it show.

* * *

Ling was morose and lamentable the entire trip back to Xing, Lanfan would've almost preferred him never meeting his soulmate, as least  _then_  she wouldn't've had to listen to the young lord wax poetic about Ed's hair or Ed's eyes or Ed's… _you got the picture._

Lanfan could concede that Ed was pretty and most certainly Ling's type, though she very much doubted he could ever be hers; Lanfan didn't really have a type. Not having a soulmate in Xing wasn't a big deal, but Lanfan couldn't help but think that her lack of a soulmate was on purpose and she didn't mind in the slightest.

"Young lord, I know Ed was pretty, but if I have to listen to you gush about him for the whole rest of the way to Xing, I will _literally_  go insane," Lanfan informed him sharply and Ling sighed, slumping forward on his horse.

It wasn't like he could help it! Anyone would be lucky to have a soulmate like Ed, and Ling hadn't even  _gotten around_  to telling him about that bit!

Next time, maybe it would be safe enough to, maybe then it would be safe enough to tangle his fingers into Ed's thick golden braid and kiss him so long that he forgot his name entirely.

 _Next time._  And Ling would be waiting impatiently for that day to come.

* * *

The house was pretty decent, Al supposed, it wasn't really like the only three houses that he had really been in -Mustang's townhouse and the house they grew up in in Resembool and the house the Rockbells had-, but it appeared to be functional, and that was what mattered most. There was a kitchen and a living room with bookshelves and a soft couch and armchairs on the first level, with the second level having all the rooms.

Al would've liked it better if he could feel the texture of the couch or the counter in the kitchen…but all he felt was empty and _stretched_ , like a string pulled taut that was fraying at the edges. He wasn't sure if he should tell Ed that, it would probably just make him throw himself into research with a vigor that he'd probably just end up getting himself terribly injured or  _worse._

Al couldn't rid the image of his older brother laying in a pool of his own blood from his mind and it was a fear, he knew, that would stick with him.

They'd had the books they usually ended up piling in the dorm room and Mustang's office sent over so Al busied himself with sorting them appropriately into the shelves when he heard Ed's footsteps -one heavy, one light- passing over the threshold.

Ed took one appraising look around the house before nodding approvingly and striding towards Al. "Close your eyes and hold out your hands," he told his brother, and though he was incredibly confused, Al did as he wanted, not questioning why it seemed that Ed was hiding something behind his back.

He felt a weight drop into his hands. It wasn't very heavy and it was moving.

If Al could positively beam, he would've.

"Okay, open your eyes."

Al found him looking on a rather tentative slate-grey kitten with green eyes that tilted its head to look at Al and let loose a "Mrow?"

"Brother," Al said with about as much emotion as he could muster,  _"I love you."_

Ed rubbed the back of his head awkwardly, a sheepish smile on his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Al finally has a cat! He strikes me as the kind of nerd that would name all his pets after elements on the periodic table.
> 
> It'll be a bit before Ling and Ed meet again, unfortunately, but Ed is officially a Lt. Col. :) This might be the last update for awhile, I'm going to be busy making nursing school clinical my bitch.


	17. From Emunah

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's so happy about Al getting his cat! The number of people that wanted to see Roy's reaction to Ed's quick 'love you' is great.
> 
> Trisha's backstory is very interesting, and you might be hearing a bit more about it, who she was, who her family was ;). The boys will find out about her before they find out the truth about their dad, so there's that ;)
> 
> I was gonna wait on posting this chapter, but its FMA day, so here you are :)

Ed didn't think it would take nearly a week for them to get the house sorted, but here they were, Ed, Al, and a cat named Nitrogen. Al was calling it Nitro for short. No one could say that they weren't nerds, naming a cat after an element.

But Nitro made Al happy,  _ridiculously_  happy, happy in a way that Ed hadn't seen in such a long time. It was…nice to wake up to Al laughing about something the cat did, nice to wake up to not feeling like he was failing Al; he still was, but this didn't hurt quite so much.

Ed spooned his cereal into his mouth almost mournfully, already regretting his decision to accept the new rank.

Mustang and his team had been transferred to Central by now, but Ed hadn't seen his CO at all, though he had seen Hawkeye at the market.

"The Colonel stared off into space for about an hour after your call," she'd mentioned mildly and Ed didn't have the time to come up with an adequate response before deciding it was better to just turn around and walk home in a stupefied daze, leaving Hawkeye a bit amused.

He almost thought that Mustang was avoiding him, which, honestly, wouldn't be that surprising; what was the appropriate response to your subordinate telling you 'love you' before hanging up? Ed didn't really think there was one.

"If you love me, you'll kill me now," Ed told Al flatly.

"Oh, come on, Brother, I don't think its  _that_  bad," Al tried to assure him. "I actually think it's kinda sweet."

Ed pressed a hand to his face to hide his enflamed cheeks. "Says you!  _You're_  the touchy-feely one, not me!"

Al snorted and Nitro meowed, pawing at him. It was adorable, really. Ed didn't think he'd get used to the near constant giggling and laughing emanating from the suit of armor. It had taken exactly three hours for Nitro to completely warm up to Al, despite his armored body, and they'd barely been apart since.

Ed called him 'fluffball' and nothing else, earning him some rather mutinous meowing whenever he called Nitro by that name.

"I'm not the one that said 'love you' to Colonel Mustang," Al retorted and Ed flushed in embarrassment.

"It was a slip of the tongue!" he insisted.

" _Sure,_  it was…"

Ed growled under his breath, swallowing some more cereal instead of responding to that.

Nitro meowed, pawing at Ed's leg, which only made Ed scowl viciously. Ed didn't mind cats, he actually liked them, but it wasn't really fair to Al to be able to pet the cat when Al really wanted to. Ed sighed, lifting the cat up and holding it out to Al.

"Brother…are you all right?" Al asked in concern, taking Nitro from him and giving him a few pats on the head. "You seem… _drained."_

"Its nothing," Ed said automatically with a sigh, leaning his head back to look at the ceiling. "I just had a dream about Mom, that's all."

"Was it a…good dream?" Al asked cautiously. One had to be when approaching Ed about the topic of their mother. Al had spent most of his nights at Ed's side for as long as he could remember, and since their failed transmutation, he knew that Ed was more often than not plagued with nightmares about the night they'd tried to bring Mom back. He'd heard Ed apologizing to her in his sleep and for once Al was very glad he wasn't able to dream or have nightmares. Those ones always ended badly, with Ed waking up to phantom pains.

This time Ed shrugged helplessly. "It was more about…Grandma Binah."

That gave Al pause. They didn't talk much about their grandparents -the ones they'd known about; Hohenheim never spoke about his side of the family, even back then- but neither had Mom. Grandma'd been pretty ill when Ed was born that she passed away a few months later; she'd never gotten the chance to meet Al before she died. "She was from a place called…Emunah, wasn't she?" It was in Amestris, that was all he could remember about his grandmother's birthplace.

"Yeah…" Ed's eyes had drifted off. Not that they could ever find a place called Emunah on a map. "I remember Mom saying something about Grandma Binah's people having a word for Hohenheim,  _zahav_ …she called him that a lot, remember?"

Al tilted his helmet in thought, trying to think back to the good old days, back when they were happy and whole. "I remember," he said, the memory fuzzy and hazy. "Is it important?"

Ed frowned again, his brow furrowing in thought. "I'm not sure…I think I heard the word somewhere else, though…it  _feels_ important." Ed pressed a hand to his brow before leaning back and staring up at the ceiling.

They'd hit a dead end with everything, on the Philosopher's Stone, on Xerxes, on the questions they had about Mom… it was like everything was a big mystery and Ed wasn't a fan of it.

"We'll figure it out," Al assured him, "we'll figure everything out."

Ed grunted.

"But I've got another idea!" Al said brightly.

Ed eyed his brother warily. Al's ideas were a reason to sleep with one eye open at night. He was sweet by nature, but his temper could turn icy with a flip of a switch. Their tempers were like fire and ice; they'd rage uncontrolled and unchecked if the other didn't quell the flames or melt the ice. "Am I going to like this idea?"

"Uh… _maybe?"_  Al wheedled.

Ed arched an eyebrow.

"I was thinking about Xerxes." That didn't surprise Ed in the slightest, Xerxes was on both of their minds, especially if it held the secrets to regaining their bodies. "You know, how we thought it was suspicious that most people that knew about it seemed to end up dead?"

"Yeah…?" Ed arched an eyebrow in confusion. "I thought that was why we were keeping everything on the down low?"

"Yeah, but I was thinking about asking Teacher," Al explained. "We asked her about the Philosopher's Stone last time we saw her and she didn't know much, but maybe she knows more about Xerxes."

The idea made Ed uneasy, not just because it was Teacher; she still scared him and probably always would, but that wasn't it. Sure, it was strange that two people that knew anything about Xerxes and also knew about alchemy -Mom and Berthold Hawkeye- ended up dead, but they had no way of knowing if that was merely a coincidence or something a bit more sinister.

"Even if she doesn't know anything about it, she might know other alchemists that could," Al added quickly, seeing how Ed wasn't much of a fan of the idea.

"What if—?" Ed's throat closed before the rest of his words could leave his throat.  _What if we get Teacher killed too?_  He pressed a hand to his mouth, coughing to hide the fear that strangled him.

"I'll be careful," Al promised, "I'll keep it quiet."

Ed's eyes flicked towards Al. " _You'll_  keep it quiet? You want to go to Dublith  _alone?"_

"Well, yeah," Al's voice was almost sheepish, like he knew Ed wasn't going to like that. "You've got to work on the State Alchemist Exam, that's coming up in a week, and I've gone to Resembool on my own…I'll be  _fine."_

"Resembool's one thing, everyone knows us in Resembool, Dublith is totally different," Ed insisted.

Their mother had no shortage of friends in Resembool, but she was a likeably person. Ed didn't even remember anyone not liking her, but the Ishvalans had gotten on the most with her and Hohenheim, probably something to do with her eyes, if not for her nature. Her eyes had been such a rich color, such a beautiful color that Ed had always wished he'd inherited that color in the stead of gold.

"Yeah, but its Teacher and Sig," Al stressed. "We promised we'd check in from time to time."

"We do!" The last time they'd checked in Teacher had threatened them bodily harm (threatened was such a mild term, Ed could still feel the bruises from when she'd kicked him in the face) before trying to hug the life out of them, only to vomit blood down her front. Teacher had had to spend most of her time during that visit in bed.

"Come on, Ed!  _Please!"_  Al clasped his fingers together doing the best impression of pleading puppy eyes. It was a good thing he didn't use that trick all the time or it would lose its effectiveness.

Predictably, Ed flaked.

"All right,  _fine,"_  he said. "Just as long as you keep it on the down low and check in with me when you get there, all right?"

If Al could've rolled his eyes, Ed knew he would've, but Ed didn't care if he was being overprotective.

There was a knock on the door and Ed huffed, getting up and practically ripping the door open, too distracted by his pressing worries about Al to be anything less than annoyed with the person on the opposite side of the door. "What'd'ya want, Bastard Colonel?"

Mustang blinked in surprised at the sudden animosity. "Wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, Fullmetal?"

Ed grunted, leaving the door open for Mustang to step inside. "All I'm saying Al is keep it quiet, okay? There's something about this whole mess that makes me suspicious."

"I will, I promise," Al said, bobbing his head agreeably before waving a gauntlet in Mustang's direction. "Good morning, Colonel!"

"Morning." Mustang arched an eyebrow at the sight of Al sitting with a small kitten pawing at his leg with interest. "I see you finally wore your brother down."

"I sure did!" Al couldn't have sounded any brighter. "This is Nitro, short for Nitrogen."

Mustang's laugh lodged in his throat and he quickly aborted it for a cough. "Interesting name."

He could hear Ed rummaging around upstairs, grumbling complaints to himself as he went. "What's up with him?"

"Probably annoyed about having to wear the uniform," Al said sagely before adding in, "probably also about me wanting to go to Dublith."

Mustang blinked, looking back towards Al. "You want to go to Dublith? Why?"

"Because Teacher's there and she's gonna kill us if one of us doesn't visit her soon," Al informed him brightly, completely unaffected by the potential murder. "Brother's staying here, obviously, since he's helping out with the State Alchemist Exam, but I'm going to head out there."

Mustang's brow furrowed briefly. "Be safe when you're out there, all right?"

Al made a scoffing sound that was uncannily like Ed's. "You and Brother are impossible! I'll be  _fine!"_

Mustang chuckled as Al turned away to coo at the cat that had started mewing for more attention, his eyes falling to a framed photo on the small table next to the couch. It was the only picture in the house, from what Mustang could see.

Within it was Ed and Al far younger than Mustang remembered them being -they must've been three or four at the most-, both grinning as they hugged their mother. Mustang had never seen a picture of Trisha Elric, but he could see that even though Ed had inherited his father's coloring, the softness of his jaw and cheekbones were inherited from his mother. Trisha had thick dark brown hair restrained in a braid that was a bit more intricate than the one that Ed sported on the daily, skin lightly tanned from the sun, and…

Mustang almost dropped the picture as his heart fell into his stomach, fear gripping it tight. He almost felt like the world was swaying around him.

Trisha Elric's eyes were blood red.

"Hey, Al?" he called, straining to keep his voice level. "Where was your mother's family from?"

"Grandpa Miron was from Drachma, he immigrated over here when he turned eighteen, I think Mom said, he was a historian, he taught history at the university in North City…Grandma Binah was from a small town called Emunah here in Amestris, she was a seamstress…why?"

Emunah…the name turned to ash in Mustang's mouth. He remembered every Ishvalan town he'd decimated in the war, but, thankfully, Emunah wasn't on that list. No, that city had been reserved for Solf Kimblee, the Crimson Lotus Alchemist. Emunah wasn't the largest city in Ishval, but it was certainly the religious center, and the place where the wounded were taken to be treated -Mustang thought he remembered something about two Amestrian doctors helping the injured there, a general had muttered about the drain of resources, and then a few days later they were suspiciously dead and no one said a thing about it- and Kimblee had destroyed it. Mustang was already weighed down with his PTSD and self-hatred at that point, but when he'd heard what Kimblee'd done, he'd vomited onto the ground.

"Just curious," he said finally. "You boys never mentioned them."

"Mom was pretty quiet about them too," Al hummed in agreement, getting Nitro some food that the cat happily chowed down on. "Not too fast, Nitro…yeah, I think Grandma died a few months after Ed was born…Grandpa died when Mom was seventeen, I think, and she left school to get a job to help Grandma keep living at home."

So, they hadn't been in Ishval during the conflict. Mustang didn't know if he was relieved or horrified. Probably both.

Ed stomped down the stairs with a scowl firm on his face, hair pulled back into a braid, looking about as comfortable in the military uniform as he had been the first time he'd worn it and that certainly hadn't changed. He marched right past Mustang without looking at him once, taking the front seat of the car Hawkeye had driven Mustang in.

Al shrugged helplessly before following after his brother, and helpless was about what Mustang felt. Did the brothers even know that they were Ishvalan? It would seem impossible for them not to, but the Ishvalans in the city slums were dark-skinned and white-haired, neither of which their mother had been. It would probably be easy for them to write off the red eyes when they had other things to focus on.

But if they didn't know…how would they even react to knowing that Mustang had played a significant part in slaughtering their mother's people?

Mustang could feel the bile rising in his throat.

* * *

Al didn't really like traveling around without Ed, if he was going to be perfectly honest.

Ed was overprotective, sure, but at least Al had someone he trusted to back him up when things went sour -granted, Ed was usually the one  _causing_  everything to explode in their faces- but it was harder when he was alone.

Al didn't like being alone. He'd spent most of his nights alone. Ed slept with his door open so Al could look in to be sure that he was still there -sometimes sleeping calmly, sometimes in the throes of a nightmare; Ed's dreams were sporadic- and Nitro slept in Al's room, so it was better, but Al was hoping he'd get his body back soon; he could only endure so much.

Al wanted to sleep even if he had nightmares, he wanted to feel the sun even if it moved behind the clouds, he wanted to smile, he wanted to cry, he wanted to do  _all of it._

They were onto something with Xerxes, he just knew it, and he was sure that Teacher knew something. She had dozens upon dozens of books in her house on alchemy and Al was pretty sure he'd read the word 'Xerxes' at least once. And at least Teacher was still alive to ask questions; the same couldn't be said for Mom. But Mom was better at keeping secrets, Al thought.

Al looked out the window, watching the world fly by as the train moved over the tracks. The sun was shining down on the greenery and the blooming flowers and it all blurred together with the speed at which the train was moving. Ed always tended to sleep through all their train rides, and if Al wasn't reading, his attention was always directed outside the window, because at least every image was slightly different from the last.

And Al liked when things were different, though, he had to admit, that he probably should've called ahead to let Teacher know that he was coming.

But she would like this surprise, right?

* * *

"Sir, you've looked terrible since we picked up the Elric Brothers this morning…are you doing all right?" Hawkeye's eyes were colored with concern as she dropped off another batch of papers for him to fill out on his desk.

Roy felt like there was a band around his head that had been wound too tight, the tension building with each passing hour. His head, needless to say, was killing him.

The upside was that the source of his headache wasn't anywhere nearby. After Al had been dropped at the train station with a cheery wave goodbye, Ed had left Roy and Hawkeye as soon as they arrived at Central Command, vanishing off in the direction of the office in charge of the State Alchemist Exam. Roy had no idea what that entailed, and he was probably better off not knowing.

Knowing Ed, he was probably making the exam harder simply by finding the questions on it too easy.

"Did you know," Roy said finally, still rubbing at his brow hard enough to leave a mark, "that Ed and Al's mother had red eyes?"

Hawkeye stiffened suddenly, surprise flowing through her entire being. "Ishvalan?" she guessed.

"Their grandmother was from Emunah," Roy admitted hollowly and Hawkeye winced.

"Do they know about…?" The words didn't quite make it past Hawkeye's throat and Roy sighed.

"You know, I'm not entirely sure," he said finally, "I mean, from the picture, their mother looked barely Ishvalan, I suppose they  _could've_  overlooked it…I remember them mentioning that there are a lot of Ishvalans living in Resembool, they've been living there for as long as either of the boys can remember. Red eyes wouldn't be unusual to them, and they're easily distractible; why worry about eye colors when they're trying to get their bodies back?"

There was a bitterness to his own voice that he hadn't been expecting, and he didn't know exactly what he was bitter about, if it was that the brothers hadn't told him about their mother's Ishvalan blood ( _Why would they?_ The dark part of his mind countered.  _You killed Ishvalans, why would they tell the killer of their mother's people that their mother was Ishvalan?)_  or something else entirely.

"Sir?" Hawkeye's brow furrowed, taking note of his tone.

"Don't mind me, Lieutenant," Roy sighed, "I've just got a lot on my mind."

"Of course, sir…do you want me to tell Edward that you're in a meeting if he does show up?"

Roy felt ashamed at how relieved that idea made him. Trying to equate fiery golden-haired, golden-eyed Edward Elric with being Ishvalan was taking work, and Roy knew if his mind was being particularly difficult, he'd see a flash of light that would make Ed's hair seem white, or trick him into seeing red instead of gold for his eyes.

The bile was rising in his throat.

Better to avoid Ed entirely than draw him into a PTSD-induced episode, which was getting more and more likely by the second.

"Colonel." Hawkeye's - _Riza's-_  voice echoed next to his ear, clear as everything around him turned yellow and fuzzy around the edges. He could feel her fingers tightening at his wrist. "Close your eyes and take a deep breath."

Roy leaned back in his chair, complying, leaving him in a world of darkness that he couldn't help but feel like he was drowning in.

"Take another breath, a deep one in through your nose and out through your mouth."

It was easy to follow orders like that and Roy slowly but surely felt his shoulders relaxing, the tension leaving them with his anxiety that had been steadily on the rise.

He opened his eyes and Hawkeye kneeling beside him, her hand still around his wrist. "Better?" she asked, a faint, soft smile on her lips.

The sun was pouring in through the window, hitting her eyes just right and Roy remembered the first time he'd seen that sherry color, narrowed in annoyance at her father's new (and only) apprentice, telling him not to get dirt on the floor. The color that had been so hollow under the heat of the Ishvalan sun was now so warm and soft.

"Better, thank you," he said finally, and she gave his wrist a lingering squeeze before standing once more.

"If that's all, Colonel?"

Roy admired her ability to snap back into the unshakable Lieutenant in less than a second. "Yes, thank you, Lieutenant."

"I'd get a head start on that paperwork," Hawkeye advised, striding towards the door, "or the next thing you know, you won't be able to see your desk,  _sir."_  The look she cast him was nothing less than sharp.

Roy felt the strong desire to salute  _her_  and just managed to stammer out a "Yes, of course" with just a faint amount of fear, but Hawkeye left satisfied, nonetheless, leaving Roy to slump in his chair.

Better paperwork than Edward, because at the moment, that was what he would prefer.

* * *

When General Kunio Hakuro had been told that Lieutenant Colonel Elric would be working with him on the State Alchemist Exam, he'd almost shit himself and requested a transfer back to North City even though he'd worked so hard to get transferred to Eastern Command after his wife became pregnant with their second child.

If Hakuro never had to deal with any Elric again, it would be too soon.

The Glacier Alchemist was still famous in North City, as famous as the Northern Wall of Briggs, which was telling, since they'd once known each other fairly well, in fact, Hakuro had often seen the women walking step in step with one another.

Trisha Elric had been a devastating force with twin gauntlets inscribed with alchemic arrays (there had been rumors that she'd had ones tattooed onto her palms as well, something Kimblee had used to his advantage during the Ishvalan War), sending spiky shards of ice up from where they collided with the snow.

Her temper was as cold as ice, and the rich red of her eyes had done nothing to warm that ice, and Hakuro remembered that gaze more than anything else; she and Major General Olivier Armstrong had it mastered.

But when he came into the room he couldn't see her tell-tale braid or her crimson eyes. Truth be told, he'd thought she'd retired some years ago.

"Where's Lieutenant Colonel Trisha Elric?" he asked to the room at large and one of the blue-clothed figures whipped around to force out a startled " _What the fuck?!"_

It was a boy, no more than fourteen or fifteen, with dark skin, golden hair and eyes, but there was something about him that reminded Hakuro of Trisha.

"What are you asking for my mother for?" Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist, demanded, full of fire and gaping in astonishment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trisha was the one in the military and was half-Ishvalan! Talk about a hard pill to swallow for Ed, huh? Red eyes are commonplace in Resembool so Ed and Al didn't notice them too much apart from liking the color, and their mom was pretty private about her parents.


	18. The Glacier Alchemist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, the truth about Trisha! Everyone collectively losing their shit about Trish being half-Ishvalan and an alchemist is the single greatest thing I've ever seen.
> 
> Sorry for the long wait, but I'm officially done with classes and I did a poll on tumblr for when to update this fic, so you guys are getting this chapter and then the next one will probably be on Christmas Day.

There was a file in Ed's hands, thicker than his, sitting before him. His fingers twitched, aching to open it, but caution steadied his hands.

He'd seen his own file before, he'd been in the personnel files in Eastern Command, but he'd never looked past his own, he'd never had a need to.

Ed should've, though, but his curiosity was what led to him becoming half-metal and losing his brother's body in the first place.

He steeled himself and opened the file to an image of his mother. She was younger than he remembered, maybe late teens early twenties. Her long brown hair wound into an intricate braid that put his to shame, skin faintly tanned, eyes blood red, contrasting with the blue military uniform.

'Glacier Alchemist' it read, 'specializing in ice and water-based attacks, assigned to Northern Command at Fort Briggs.'

Elemental-based alchemy was fairly common, though most alchemists limited their alchemy to offensive and defensive, since that was the most useful in a fight. But if his mother used ice-based alchemy, then it wasn't very surprising that she would've been assigned to North City; there was nothing but snow and ice up there.

Ed didn't know if he could force himself to read to the file.

Did he even really know his mother? Ed wouldn't have hesitated yesterday, but today…today he was completely and utterly  _lost._

His mother was the daughter of a Drachman immigrant and an Ishvalan woman, his father probably wasn't even from Amestris, not with his (Ed's) coloring. Was Amestris even his  _home?_

Retrospectively, the Ishvalan thing should've been fairly obvious, red eyes were their trademark, but red eyes weren't uncommon in Resembool, and Ishvalans were fairly well known for having red eyes and pure white hair; it was easy to disregard the red eyes when they were paired with brown hair.

Ed flipped through to pages detailing his mother's life that he'd never expected to learn about. About how -until his entrance into the military- she had been the youngest State Alchemist, entering the military at age seventeen, rising up to a lieutenant colonel and transferring to North City, where she'd grown up before her family had moved to Resembool. It seemed she was a very successful deterrent for Amestris against Drachma. Ed had to wonder how she'd felt about that, being half-Drachman.

There was an image of her, hair whipped by the wind, her uniform thick to combat the cold weather, a set of gauntlets over her gloved hands with a transmutation circles carved into them, and a serious mask etched into her face. She was standing beside a woman with long blonde hair and a positively icy disposition in appearance alone, with a sword at her hip.

Why did Ed get the feeling that the more he found out about his mother, the less he felt he knew?

Ed shut the folder, tucking it under his arm and heading off in the direction of the Colonel's office. He didn't bother knocking on the door, just throwing it open, per usual.

"Is the Colonel in?" he asked Hawkeye bluntly when the other men looked up, hardly surprised that it was him, more surprised in the manner in which he asked and how he looked, he was sure.

Havoc opened his mouth to say something, but Hawkeye beat him to it.

"I'm afraid not," she said smoothly, without any trace of a lie, and she would've gotten away with it, if not for Havoc and Breda sharing a startled look. "He was called away to an important meeting."

Ed's jaw tightened as he looked at into her sherry eyes. They were flat and blank. Those were the eyes that had looked through a scope of a rifle that had shot down Ishvalan after Ishvalan in the war, that was why she was still called 'the Hawk's Eye' with the same reverence that Mustang was called the 'Hero of Ishval'. Ed had a lot of words that were rising up in his throat, but he silenced them, burning them away into ash on his tongue.

"Give him a message, then," Ed said, full of fire and wrath, "tell him, this isn't something he can hide from, I  _deserve_  an explanation."

Then he slammed the door shut behind him hard enough to crack the frame. Ed felt like he was burning, like fire was consuming him from the inside out and he didn't - _couldn't_ \- cool it. It was like wildfire in dry heat.

They always seemed separate in his head: Roy Mustang, his superior officer, the Flame Alchemist, the narcissistic colonel with a god complex, and the Hero of Ishval, the one that had burned so many Ishvalans  _to death_  in the war.

It hurt, Ed realized, more than he thought it would. Knowing his mom was one thing, he still loved her and always would, but  _Mustang_ …Ed didn't know why, but it cut deeper. Mom was dead, twice over because of him, and Ed couldn't shy away from that, but what would she think of the man who decimated her people being in charge of her children.

She must hate Ed  _so much_  wherever she was, and Ed deserved it.

Ed, who had been starting to look up to Mustang a bit more, who patted his and Al's heads, who gave Al books to read to keep him preoccupied during the night, who poked and prodded to get them to open up, who had killed his mother's people with a snap of his fingers.

He thought about Mom's gleaming smile and her beautiful crimson eyes, full of warmth and love.

What could she even say to him about all this? About the choices he'd made, about what he'd done to Al?

Ed had never felt so keenly like a failure of a human being, of being his mother's son, than in that moment.

* * *

Dublith hadn't changed much, just Al's height. One of the only upsides to being a suit of armor that was over seven feet tall was that he didn't have to jump in order to see clearly.

It made it very easy to see Sig, even if he hadn't been a very tall man to start with.

"Al," the massive man said, raising a hand to rub the top of his helmet that warmed Al's intangible heart more than he could ever convey. "Didn't believe you when you said you were coming alone, but I would've heard Ed by now."

Al couldn't help but laugh at that. "You're not wrong," he giggled. Ed had a certain volume that he tended to exude, even when being subtle, some of it seeped out. "How's Teacher?"

Sig's smile faltered slightly as they moved away from the train station. "It's a bad day. Not terrible, but far from her best."

"Oh," Al's metaphorical heart dropped into his metal chest.

"She's just taking it easy, so, hopefully, tomorrow she'll be a bit more lively."

Al had a lot of books on Alkahestry from Xing, courtesy of a very grateful Lanfan, and he kept thinking that if he could just master the healing side of alchemy then he could make Teacher's condition so much more manageable…but then he had to weigh it against getting their bodies back and Al felt so lost. Was it selfish to want to feel the warmth of the sun? Was it selfish to want to sleep at night? Was it selfish to want to smile? Al wasn't sure.

"Why didn't Ed come?" Sig asked him curiously, frowning up at him as they walked down the street. "Not still scared after last time, is he?"

Al giggled again. It was very true that Teacher inspired true fear into his and Ed's hearts -Ed's more so than Al's- but, obviously, that wasn't it. "No, Brother was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and is helping with the State Alchemist Exam…I'm actually pretty sure he's trying to make it harder."

"That does sound like him," Sig conceded with a grunt. Al knew that neither he nor Teacher liked the military, and some days Ed really didn't, but he wasn't wrong about it giving him access to information and tools that were off limits to others. Teacher and Ed had practically agreed not to bring up him being in the military if at all possible. "So, what brings you back to Dublith? Not the usual reason, I'm guessing."

"No," Al admitted, "we think we might have a lead, but I wanted to pick Teacher's brain about it because we're not really sure about it…think Teacher will be up to it?"

"Anything that distracts her from being in bed," Sig chuckled as they walked past a bar with the emblazoned name 'Devil's Nest'. Al remembered it from the last time they'd been to visit, but now it looked like a pale imitation of what it once was; rundown, bullet holes, cracked windows, and something that might've been a smear of blood.

"What happened to the Devil's Nest?" he asked curiously. It hadn't ever looked like a place Al would willingly spend his time in the first place, and now that feeling had simply been amplified.

Sig's mouth thinned, his bushy eyebrows drawing together as he scowled. "Ah,  _that,"_  he said. "No one's really sure what happened, a for some reason the military came out here two months ago and practically had a shootout with the owner of the bar, a strange guy called Greed, killed his bodyguards and dragged him away."

"What?" Al asked, startled. "What  _for?"_

"Not sure, but best keep Ed being in the military on the down low for a while…tensions are a bit high right now," Sig warned and Al bobbed his head in agreement. Ed already ran into enough trouble as it was with being in the military.

Al garnered a few odd looks on the street, but people were a bit more used to the suit of armor that accompanied one of those boys that Izumi Curtis took in for six months a few years back. It wasn't something he wanted to get used to, but here he was. And Al knew they were on the brink of  _something_ , something that could lead to them getting their bodies back. He could almost  _touch it._

They entered the house quietly and Al waved at Mason where he was packaging up meat where it opened up into the butcher shop. He waved back with his cleaver and Al couldn't help but tense uneasily, remembering the cleaver that Barry the Chopper had hefted when he'd tried to kill Ed, Ed who had clung to Al after the incident, eyes hollow and filled with terror. Al didn't realize how much they tended to avoid butcher shops until he realized that it was half of the reason Ed never wanted to visit the Curtises; trauma, Colonel Mustang had said, manifested in different ways.

He followed Sig back to the bedroom he and Teacher shared, waiting in the hall a brief moment before Sig opened the door further. "She's sleeping," he murmured, "but why don't you keep her company?"

"Of course," Al said quickly and quietly, moving slowly into the room so that the metal that made up his body didn't clang together quite so much. Teacher was fast asleep, her cheeks paler than usual, and Al could see a dark smudge at the edge of her mouth, undoubtedly blood that she had coughed up before falling asleep.

At least she looked peaceful. Al would give her the time to rest, it wasn't like he needed the answers in the next five minutes, and if there was one thing that Teacher deserved, it was peace and quiet.

So, he settled into the chair pulled close to the bed, grabbing up a nearby book and began to read.

* * *

There was a box of Mom's things that they hadn't really touched, not since they moved house. Al had shoved about everything he could think of that was important into that large crate, but even he hadn't felt comfortable with touching Mom's things, so they'd stayed in the crate in one of the spare bedrooms.

But Ed couldn't sate his curiosity anymore, or his pain. He didn't realize how many people in the military actually knew his mother. They were all transfers from North City, and that's where she had been documented stationed, so he supposed that it made sense for them to be a little familiar with her. But having to explain over and over again that she was dead, that she'd been ill and had just gotten worse and worse until she passed away (until Ed forced her back to life and killed her again) was just emotionally draining. Those soldiers had been disappointed and saddened by the news, so Ed had to presume that Mom was well-liked.

His fingers paused on the lid of the crate and Ed steeled his nerves before pulling it off to get a good look within.

There was a box full of pictures that he almost skated over, but he decided to pull it out first, sitting on the bed and opening it up. In the back there were pictures of when his mother was younger.

One of her kneeling on the floor, hands pressed over a transmutation circle that made a small figure like a horse, like Ed and Al had once made her…no wonder her eyes had gleamed so much when she'd seen them, with her father by her side looking very impressed. His hair was as brown as hers, but it was clear that she had taken after Grandma Binah the most; there was another of her older, completely surrounded by sand, standing in front of some temple of a sort, it was beautiful and far more impressive than any building Ed had seen in Amestris; then there was one of her at seventeen, wearing the Amestrian military uniform, with her arms around her mother, and Grandma Binah was smiling with identical red eyes that crinkled in the corners; and the next one gave Ed pause, because Mom was in a hospital bed, smiling, with a bundle in her arms with a tuft of golden hair and dark skin to match the crying man at her side. Ed didn't think he'd ever seen Hohenheim cry, even over him, so it was strange to see. There was a woman at her side, the same woman that had been in the picture in Mom's file, still in the military uniform and still wearing a sword.

There were some of him and Al when they were smaller. Ed was guessing that was where Al had gotten the picture to give Mustang. He smoothed a finger over Al's bright smile; one day soon he'd be able to see it in person.

There were a lot of books in the crate, Ed realized, that they hadn't touched. They were all in a language that Ed and Al didn't know, but now he was beginning to think that it could be Ishvalan. He flipped through one of the books aimlessly until he came across a few folded-up papers that looked like drafts of some kind, written in his mother's hand.

Ed had to pause suddenly, staring at the words on the pages, scribbled out and replaced with similar words, words that Ed was familiar with. That couldn't be right… he practically leapt to his feet, racing back to his room, and nearly yanking open the lowest cabinet of his bedside table, where he'd shoved the note Hohenheim had written that Al had found. It had been a source of pain for him when he'd first read it, knowing that Hohenheim couldn't think of his children as being good (it hurt as much as when Ed realized that he was right).

When he compared them he had to stare.

_It's difficult for me to look at (_ _both of)_ _them, knowing they (_ _were created)_ _came from something so dark, so evil(_ _, something that should've stayed buried)_ _. They'll never be (_ _safe)_ _clean of me. I look at them and I see my Xerxian line (_ _alive and thriving)_ _continued, I see the golden hair and eyes, the skin that (_ _is sun-kissed)_ _absorbs the sun best, I see (_ _their)_ _potential for greatness. But those are thoughts of the man I (_ _used to be)_ _once was, the man who grew from a slave without a name to a revered (_ _and beloved_ _alchemist)._

_Nothing good has ever come from me(,_ _from my wishes and dreams),_ _not even my love for Trisha, not even my boys are_ _free_ _spared of that. And one day they'll_ _need to_ _have to understand that what I've done has been to keep them safe, despite what I am, despite what (_ _I've done)_ _they are. (_ _This is the price of equivalent exchange.)_

Mom had no reason to refer to herself in the third person when Hohenheim was clearly the one meant to be the writer of the words on the page. It was like they'd been toying around with the right words to make it work. It wasn't like they were trying to come up with a hurtful note, he realized, more like they needed specific words and letters, like they needed to be in the right order. Ed had a lot of notes like that when he was still figuring out how to write his code, though now Ed could do it from memory.

The note was written in code, one that Ed wasn't familiar with, and honestly, he couldn't help but be relieved by that. To know that it wasn't that there was something terrible about him and Al (Al could never be terrible, Al was too good and too kind for the world, but Ed was certainly far from) but that they were the words needed to make the code work eased him more than he'd like to admit.

He'd tell Al when he got back from Dublith, he decided, returning all the papers to the drawer and going back to the crate. There were a few little trinkets that belonged to Mom, and a box that she'd always kept at her bedside and whenever Ed had tried to open it, she'd winked and pressed a finger to her lips, like it was a secret. It was locked, but alchemizing the lock took very little effort.

Mom's State Alchemist watch looked a lot like Ed's, just a bit more worn and dustier; it was nowhere near as pristine as Ed's. Under it, Ed noticed, was a folder.

 _In the event of the premature death of Trisha Tahlia Elric_ , was written in her curved handwriting and Ed could feel his heart freeze in his chest and then sink down into his stomach, like lead.

* * *

"Are you feeling better, Teacher?" Al's voice was colored with concern and Teacher's eyes softened.

"A bit," she said and Al couldn't for the life of him tell if she was lying or not. Teacher was very skilled in hiding how terrible she was feeling…until she started vomiting up blood, then Ed and Al tended to freak out about what they needed to do. "So, what're you doing here, Al? Its not just to see me, is it?"

"Well, I mean, kinda," Al chuckled nervously, rubbing at the back of his helmet awkwardly. "How're you doing, Teacher?" He didn't know why he was feeling so evasive, but it didn't seem right to just straight up ply her with questions without seeing how she'd been first.

Teacher, as sharp as ever, saw right through him. "Spit it out, Al."

Al nearly huffed. "Fine," he replied just that side of petulant, "I wanted to know if you knew anything about Xerxes."

Teacher's eyes bulged and she choked briefly on her cup of water. She coughed powerfully and Al watched just a little bit of blood spray into the tissue she'd used to cover her mouth. " _That,"_  she rasped when she could finally breathe, "is a dangerous thing to be asking about, Al…shut the window, won't you?"

She definitely knew something and Al rose quickly to comply, locking the window shut and settling down into his chair once again.

"What do you know?" she asked him tersely if a bit tiredly.

"We know that according to myth, the Eastern Sage that brought alchemy to Amestris was supposedly from Xerxes, that supposedly the Philosopher's Stone was used to destroy the kingdom in a single night, something about there being a Mad Prince of Xerxes, a place called Persepolis being the true center of Xerxes, and that's about it." It was just bits and pieces, unfortunately; they were mostly operating by word of mouth.

Teacher pushed a few boxbraids over her shoulder. "Not much you've got on it," she conceded, "but that makes sense since the military did a soft purge of Xerxes-related books some years ago."

"Wait, they did?" Al leaned forward startled. "I mean, we thought it was weird that there didn't seem to be any books on the subject…"

Teacher's lips twisted into a faint smile. "You were on the right path, you two must get your persistence from your mother."

Al froze, staring at her. "I- _what?"_

Teacher took another drink of her water. "Most, if not _all_ , of the alchemists in Amestris know her name…the ones in North City admired and feared her the most, but she was the Glacier Alchemist then, so that would make sense."

" _What?"_  his voice floundered and weakened and even though Al couldn't and didn't need to breathe, he was sure that if he had his body, he would've stopped breathing right then.

Teacher arched an eyebrow. "I thought it was strange that her sons never brought up their infamous alchemist mother…did you not know about that?"

Al's silence was enough of an answer and Teacher grimaced, reaching a hand out to pat Al's armored gauntlet. "No," Al said finally, "we um—" He thought about Mom, sitting on the floor with them, smiling brightly as she showed them how to draw transmutation circles, clapping her hands in delight when the transmutations worked and assuring them they'd work next time when they didn't. "She never mentioned it," he acquiesced finally.

"Your mother knew the most about Xerxes," Teacher told him seriously, "but the next thing any of us alchemists knew, she was dead."

"She got sick," Al said quickly, his words surprisingly hollow. "A lot of people got sick in Resembool then."

"But I'm guessing she was the only one who died, wasn't she?" Teacher questioned, dark eyes persistent and Al froze up again. "Trust me on this, Al, it was  _no coincidence_  that your mother died when she did."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Trisha Elric Alchemist bombshell is being dropped on both sides, which is great :) I think Ed's getting more of a complete picture than Al, but they'll share notes when they come back together. The note Hohenheim wrote is important, maybe not in book 2, but definitely in book 3, so don't forget about it! Eventually, we're going to see Ling again, I promise. He might show up in the next chapter, who knows, but don't worry, very soon the Xing Trio and the Elric brothers will be having a lot of interactions.


	19. Suppression

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've been seeing so much of Ed's side of things that its time to switch gears.
> 
> Just to reiterate: this is not the same plot at the manga and Brotherhood. At this point, this fic is canon adjacent so 'Father's Plan' is not coming into play. There is a massive climax for the last two books of this fic, but its not the same as 'Father's Plan'

"I am going to give you a list of names," Teacher told Al, "you are going to write them down and then I'm going to tell you what to do with them when I'm done."

"Uh-okay?" Al scrambled to grab a pen and a small journal like the one Ed was always writing his code into, plucked from one of the few pockets that came from the strap of leather that was wound around the armor's waist.

"The sisters Corniche and Seraph Royce, Aston Martin, Jack Crowley, Lute Daimler, Elma Lincor, Berthold Hawkeye, and Arlen Glostner."

Al wrote them all down and then Teacher cleared her throat, taking a drink of water from the glass beside her.

"You should know that any alchemist worth their salt has found themselves drawn to Xerxes and studied it with great interest," Teacher explained. "How could we not? It was where alchemy first began…it was too  _tempting_  a kind of forbidden knowledge to pass up…alchemists are far too curious for their own good; there's a reason that Human Transmutation is taboo."

Al paused, taking note of the bitterness in her voice. "Teacher?" he asked cautiously. Her eyes were distant and unfocused, a hand resting on her stomach.

"He would've been your age," she'd told the brothers once and it was so easy to see how one event had shaped her life so completely.

"I'm all right," Teacher said with a sigh, righting herself, her eyes sharpening in an instant. "If you mentioned Xerxes to any of the alchemists you know, they would probably tell you variations of the same story. That it interested them when they were young, that they looked into it but found that there was little to be learned from books, like Amestris had suppressed all the written word concerning the Empire of Xerxes."

"That's what we thought too," Al admitted, vaguely startled.

Teacher took a tissue from the bedside, coughing wetly into it and Al saw specks of bright red blood strewn across the white before she dropped it into the trashcan beside her bed, collecting with the others. Al would've winced if his body would allow it, but, even then Teacher wouldn't have appreciated it.

"So, the basics are that there was once a great empire called Xerxes whose capital, Persepolis was smack in the middle of what we now know as the Eastern Desert. You can still see influences of Xerxes, though, it reached far and wide and the rumor is a great deal of Xerxes used to be located where Amestris now is."

Al's pen moved quickly but he couldn't help but be impressed. "It used to be where Amestris is? But…" He paused. "That's pretty  _big."_

Teacher snorted. "It was an empire, we are a  _country,_  one that is paved in blood. It's easier to think of Xerxes and Xing as being on par with one another in size," she explained. Xing, Al knew, was a very large country. Of course, it had to be, he supposed, if there were fifty clans, all vying for the throne. "Of course, I'm sure Xing was smaller back then…Xerxes was ruled by a monarchy that had two sons, there were a lot of rumors about the 'Lost Prince' and even more about the 'Mad Prince of Xerxes'."

"That doesn't sound good," Al muttered.

"Several alchemists I'd met believed that the Mad Prince was the one behind Xerxes destruction," Teacher had to agree, "but no one is actually completely sure…they're not even  _completely_  sure how Xerxes was destroyed."

Al started. "I thought the Philosopher's Stone was involved?"

"That's what the books say," but Teacher shrugged her shoulders. "The Philosopher's Stone allows an alchemist to bypass equivalent exchange, but there's always been a question about what you need to sacrifice in order to create one."

Al's pen paused at that. He and Ed hadn't considered that. They'd just been trying to  _find_ the damn thing, they hadn't even considered it could be made, or even what it would take to make one. "Who would even know how to make one?" he asked.

Teacher pursed her lips. "I don't think the people who know are telling…which probably means its ingredients are less than tasteful…but don't give up," she added, noticing how his shoulders slumped, "even if the Philosopher's Stone won't get your bodies back, it might put you on the path of what  _will."_

Al bobbed his head in agreement. "So, is that all you know about it?"

"Pretty much, like I said, there's not much on it…you'd probably find more information in the Ruins of Xerxes though I doubt you'd be able to understand Xerxian."

"Well, you never know," Al forced his voice into being so bright but her sad smile told him that he hadn't fooled her.

"You remember those names I told you?" she asked, and he flipped back to them. "Each of those alchemists, including your mother, had an interest in Xerxes, one that was known to other alchemists."

"Okay?" Al didn't want to think about why that was important, but he was sure that Teacher would know.

"Each of those alchemists is dead."

Al almost broke his pen, lifting his helmet to meet her eyes.

"After Berthold's death, I think your mother must've gotten suspicious and decided to go to Central…I remember you told me that one week shortly before her death she left to see an old friend," Teacher screwed up her brow in thought. "A few weeks later she passed away from an apparent illness."

"Are you—" Al's words failed him. "Are you trying to say our mother was  _murdered?"_  He didn't care if she noticed how much his voice shook.

"I'm saying…I have a lot of information on each of those alchemists that you might want to look at before you lose your temper with me," Teacher spoke sharply, noticing how his tone had shifted colder; his temper had always been far icier than Ed's. "Look through that, then we'll talk again, all right?"

Even though his body couldn't feel anything, Al couldn't help but feel uncommonly cold.

* * *

Roy slept terribly with dreams that started simple enough before twisting into nightmares. A memory that Roy had practically forgotten. All the red eyes had melded together over the years; any Ishvalan could've been any  _other_  Ishvalan and Roy had killed far too many to be able to differentiate anymore.

"So, you became a soldier after all, Roy," his master's words were disdainful and disgust, his attention focused in front of him, on a letter that Roy couldn't make out from where he was standing.

"Yes, master," Roy said simply, "my goal is to pass the state alchemist test and devote myself to serving my country."

Master Hawkeye looked back then and there was something in his eye that unsettled Roy, too young to have found death and decay more unsettling. "Apparently you're still not ready to learn my flame alchemy."

Roy felt a spike of anger. "But  _sir!_  Have I not mastered all the fundamentals of alchemy that you've taught me?"

"You have," Master Hawkeye said, "and it was a waste to teach even the basics to someone who would stoop so low as to become a dog of the military."

"But alchemy should be used for the masses!" Roy insisted. "Master, I believe that working in the military will allow me to better help the public. Our nation is constantly under threat from neighboring countries. In order to protect our citizens its urgent that we strengthen our military and alchemy is—"

"I'm  _tired_ of hearing that rhetoric," Master Hawkeye said with a sigh. He certainly sounded it. "I have only known one decent State Alchemist…and do you know why she joined the military?"

"No," Roy said honestly, thunderstruck that he was talking about something so personal, which he never did.

"Her father had just died and she needed a way to care for her mother, and when her mother was gone, she stayed because it was what she knew, because she had two children to look after…it was only when the military was on the cusp of going to war with her people that she resigned."

Roy's mouth went dry. So, his friend was an Ishvalan State Alchemist? As far as Roy knew, there'd only been one; he'd seen glimpses of her in papers, but far too indistinct to recognize on sight.

"I know from her experience that the military is a dangerous place," Master Hawkeye said. "The last time they offered me a State Alchemist position I spat in their faces."

"But, why?" Roy was lost. "They have access to research materials that could—"

"I completed my research years ago," Master Hawkeye cut him off. "My technique is the greatest and the most powerful form of alchemy but in the wrong hands it would bring nothing but ill fortune…I became too complacent. Alchemists are creatures who must search for Truth as long as they live,  _she_  taught me that."

Master Hawkeye stood swiftly and twisted unevenly to fix Roy with a stare that burned through him.

"It's a pity," he said thickly, "that I have no more time to teach you…all my notes from my research are held by my daughter—" He coughed suddenly and vomited a sea of blood.

"Master Hawkeye!" Roy leapt forward.

"Look after my daughter," he rasped with difficulty and a door was thrown open with a loud yell of "Berthold!"

Roy struggled to hold up Master Hawkeye and turn to see Riza behind a woman wearing a loose blue dress, the traditional orange and black sash wound around her waist undoubtedly hidden when her coat was shut. Her red eyes were wide, dark brown hair pushed aside to account for a braid, cheeks just lightly tanned. There were sunglasses clutched in her hand. You would've never known she was Ishvalan without them.

"Berthold!" she called again as Roy helped Master Hawkeye back to sit in his chair, pale as a ghost, fading fast. Roy didn't know what to do. She came to his side, fingers fluttering along his neck, worry shining in her eyes. "Tell me what's wrong! Tell me what's happened!"

There was a mark on the meat of her palm, Roy realized then, like a sideways Z. Roy had seen it once before, when Master Hawkeye had pulled his hair up, he had an identical mark on the nape of his neck.

But when she fixed her eyes on Roy, she was covered in blood, staining her chest and her face.

"Meddle with my children, Roy Mustang, and you will pay the price." Her bloodstained smirk was painfully like Ed's. "You think I'd ever allow the  _Monster of Ishval_  to touch my children with his gloves so stained in the blood of our people?"

And then Roy shot up in bed, breathing hard, sweat plastering his hair to his face. His heart was racing, like it was trying to burst out of his chest. He wondered vaguely if Ed dreamed about that night that he and Al had tried to bring their mother back and if the thing they'd transmuted had ever looked as terrifying as Trisha Elric had in his nightmare.

 _But what's one more Ishvalan?_  The darkest side of his mind asked, the one that had weathered the Ishvalan War, shutting down almost all emotional responses to what he'd seen, to what he'd done.

"Shut up," he muttered out loud, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes before rolling over to flip on the lamp at his bedside and impulsively pick up the phone and dial a familiar number.

He regretted it the instant Gracia tiredly picked up with a  _"Hello?"_

"Gracia," he said thickly, "I-I'm sorry about calling, I just—"

" _Oh, Roy,"_  she said and it almost hurt how unsurprised her tone was, " _hang on, Maes is here."_

There was the faint sound of rustling with the phone undoubtedly being handed off to her husband.  _"Roy,"_  came Hughes' concerned voice, " _what's wrong? You don't usually call this late."_

Roy had stopped; he didn't want to impose on the Hughes, particularly Gracia and Elicia, but that didn't mean his nightmares had stopped. Ironically, the best night sleep he'd gotten had been when Ed and Al spent the night after Ed's excursion into the Eastern Desert, returning with Lanfan in tow. Now, the Elrics were the  _cause_  of his nightmares. "I'm sorry for—"

" _Don't worry about it,"_  Hughes waved him off. " _Tell me what's wrong."_

" _Tell me what's wrong!"_  Trisha Elric echoed in his mind and Roy pressed a hand to his brow.

"It was a nightmare -it started like a memory, but then she grabbed me and there was so much  _blood—"_  Roy's voice shook and he looked down at his own hands, fully expecting to see the crimson splashed across his hands.

" _She who?"_  Hughes asked with so much gentle patience that it almost broke Roy.

"Trisha Elric," Roy forced the name out, "Ed and Al's mother…I'd forgotten that she was an old friend of Master Hawkeye's…" He'd murmured something to her before he'd passed and she'd paled, taking off before Roy could ask her to stop, not even knowing if he should.

According to the records, Trisha Elric had died a week later in her home, surrounded by her children and her family of friends, from a supposed illness. Now Roy was starting to get suspicious.

"She had red eyes," he told Hughes flatly.

" _Ah,"_  Hughes said intelligently, " _have you talked with Ed or Al about it?"_

Roy nearly snapped 'of course not!', but his silence was telling enough.

" _Roy."_  Hughes sighed audibly on the other end.  _"Don't you think this is something you should be talking about with them?"_

"Have you  _seen_  Ed angry?" Roy asked dubiously. "The kid'd find a way to set  _me_  on  _fire."_

" _Roy,"_  Hughes said again and Roy gritted his teeth,  _"you can't avoid them forever, besides, they both seemed to care a lot about you; I've seen you three interact, you know."_

"Ed will still kill me," Roy countered before a horrified realization grew, "and Al will never  _speak_  to me again." Somehow, that was worse, Roy thought.

" _Still,"_  Hughes insisted,  _"it's not something you can will into disappearing. The longer you wait, the angrier they'll probably get."_

Roy grimaced, thinking about how Ed violently exploded at the faintest mention of his father who hadn't been a part of their lives for nearly ten years; he really didn't want to be considered on the same level as Van Hohenheim, but he couldn't help but think that was the direction he was going in.

But Roy was a coward, and he wasn't afraid to admit that. If you'd asked him a week ago if he'd be willing to talk to the Elric Brothers after a surprising reveal of information regarding who they were related to, he would've said yes, but now…now Roy wanted to  _flee_  back to East City in an effort to avoid them.

(Luckily, Al wasn't even in the city limits. He pulled off disappointment and bone-deep anger very well for a suit of armor)

He remembered Ed asking about the Ishvalan War, curiosity glowing in his eyes…had he even  _known_ then what he was asking? But Ed wasn't needlessly cruel, not about something like that; he had his own traumas that had taught him to be careful about others'.

"Thanks, Maes," he said finally, "sorry for waking you."

" _Don't worry about it."_  Roy hated how earnest his voice was.  _"Try and get some sleep, won't you?"_

"I'll try," Roy said, but he didn't believe he would manage it, and sure enough, within the hour, Roy was waking up to dreams of vacant golden eyes and pooling blood.

* * *

"You must think I'm stupid."

There was a warm chuckle on the other end of the phone and Ed looked down at the picture in his hands of his mom in the middle of a laugh with her arm around Gerah, his white hair tied back and his red eyes gleaming. Mom had gotten on with everyone in Resembool, but Gerah probably the most; his family had been from a town one over from where Grandma Binah was from. " _Not really, I mean, you and Al were kids who didn't really care much to differentiate between the people you lived near, there wasn't really a divide of Amestrian townspeople and Ishvalan townspeople…honestly, I think Trisha was happier about that."_

It didn't help Ed with feeling stupid, though.

" _Your mother was a private person,"_  Gerah added as an assurance.  _"It's not stupid to not realize something she never talked about…besides, physically you take more after your father -I know you don't like to hear that, but you and Al are his spitting image."_

Ed nearly growled at the mention of Hohenheim, but he reined it in.

" _Al's got her temper, I think_ ," Gerah added,  _"her anger always ran icy cold…but I see more of her in your face."_

"You-really?" Ed was vaguely thrown off by that. No one had ever said he'd looked like Mom before.

" _Really_ ," Gerah laughed. " _But if you wanted to learn more about our culture, you could always ask any older Ishvalan that you see in Central, they wouldn't turn you away, particularly the elders."_

"But they don't like the military," Ed pointed out with a frown. The Ishvalan population was easy to find, unfortunately, most being located in the slums. Ed and Al had played with a few of the kids before.

" _They don't, but its kind of ingrained in us to treat those who are golden-haired and golden-eyed with kindness,"_  Gerah explained. " _Extend Sister Xerxes a hand, I believe is how the saying goes."_

Ed opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Lanfan's explanation about Xerxes and the Xerxians stuck in his mind, about how she'd instantly thought he was one from his coloring.

" _Ed?"_

"Sorry," Ed said quickly, righting himself, "but you're sure there's not a book or anything that I could read on Ishvalan culture and language? I'm not the best with  _people."_

" _I had no idea."_  Ed could hear Gerah's smile. " _But there are books, undoubtedly, in the Central City library on our culture…I'm not so sure about the language side…I suppose there could be basics on Ishvalan, but it helps more to learn it from an actual person, but you could certainly try."_

Ed sighed. "Thanks anyways."

" _No problem,"_  Gerah assured him, " _don't you boys be afraid to call for anything."_

Ed bit his lip briefly before promising, ending the call and examining the photo in his hand, eyes flicking back to the pile of the pictures he'd found tucked away. On the top was a picture of Mom standing next to man with lanky blonde hair pulled back in a short ponytail, both holding up a piece of paper with an unfamiliar transmutation circle across it, looking very proud.

The thick envelope that had Mom's name on it remained unopened and although Ed's curiosity had peaked the day he'd found it, it wasn't fair to open it when Al wasn't there, so he was just going to have to wait until Al came back.

His stomach twisted uncomfortably and Ed rubbed over his neck where his soulmark was. For some reason he had a bad feeling…

* * *

Al had known about Lieutenant Hawkeye's father being dead, so it wasn't a surprise to read it in the file, but Teacher had gone further and Al didn't know how she'd gotten autopsy results, but they were there, including blood tests that indicated a foreign substance had been found in his blood…and for some reason investigating that further had been put at a standstill.

Now that was  _pretty_  suspicious…and then Al got to the others.

Corniche and Seraph Royce were a pair of young alchemists gifted in medical alchemy who hadn't been with the military but had gone to help with the war effort in Ishval. They'd been like Aunt Sarah and Uncle Yuriy, helping both Amestrian and Ishvalan alike…no cared about two more dead Ishvalans, even two revered alchemists such as the Royce Sisters.

The story was the same for Aston Martin, Jack Crowley, Lute Daimler, Elma Lincor, and Arlen Glostner. Promising alchemists who died suddenly without warning. Some randomly, a mugging gone wrong, another was a car accident, another had a sudden infection that claimed their life too suddenly…it was all too strange, too  _coincidental._

And by Teacher's explanations, they'd been the ones that had known the most about Xerxes…it almost seemed like they'd been on an exclusive list,  _a hit list_ , only they were trying to make it as unnoticeable as possible that each of the people on the list were being killed on purpose.

It made Al uneasy about  _Mom._

It made Al uneasy about  _Teacher._

It made Al uneasy in general, and he didn't  _like_  feeling so uneasy about it.

* * *

Lanfan was watching Ling tonight while Fu was doing some investigating, and by investigating, he meant taking up residence outside the Imperial Palace, on the window outside the Emperor's bedroom.

It wasn't a particular favorite pastime of his, but desperate times call for desperate measures. He could feel the tension building, he'd felt it since the day they'd come back from Amestris, and it had only grown. It was expanding like a balloon steadily filling with air that was soon going to reach its breaking point.

And it was Fu job to make sure that Ling wasn't in the line of fire when that happened, and so far, everything had gone according to plan; there had been no other attempts on his life.

But Fu got the feeling that that was about to change.

Xing Ying hadn't been nearly as suspicious as of late, which in itself  _was_  suspicious. The firstborn son of the Emperor was the one everyone looked to when a tragedy befell an heir of one of the fifty clans, but he always seemed to come out on top, uncommonly clean, even by Fu's standards.

But there wasn't really any questioning that he was behind what was happening in the background, there was just no one willing to do anything about it. It was like living in a fascist state, if the Emperor hadn't been bad to begin with.

Fu was jarred out of his thoughts suddenly at the sound of a door creaking open suddenly and he made sure that no matter what, he would remain unseen to the person who just entered.

It was Xing Ying and Fu had to stare.

There was blood coating half his face and his left eye looked ruined beyond repair. The blade in his hand was coated in crimson. Honestly, the firstborn had never quite struck him as a strong opponent, let alone one that could protect himself or kill others; he had others do his dirty work for him.

But he cut a fearsome and somewhat terrifying figure and Fu watched him carefully and wondered why he was approaching the bed of his slumbering father with a sword and why none of the Emperor's guards were stopping him…but then the explanation for his injuries appeared.

If Ling hadn't hated the Emperor so much, if Lanfan hadn't hated the Emperor so much, if Fu hadn't hated the Emperor so much…he would've done something, but when he saw Xing slit the Emperor's throat, Fu ran, knowing only one thing; Ling Yao wouldn't last the night if he remained in Xing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drama on the Xing front, intrigue on the Xerxes front. There's a lot going on in the fic right now but it'll get less chaotic sooner or later :)


	20. Powder Keg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of stuff going down at the same time, its kinda the big hump to get over in the next few chapters :) There was some confusion about Riza and Roy forgetting about Trisha, but the memory Roy recalls was the first and only time he saw her and he didn't even get a name and after the war, all the Ishvalans tended to blur together in his nightmares.

"Young lord,  _wake up!"_

"Five more minutes," Ling muttered, rolling over in the bed, but the grip on his arm was tight, wrenching him back and Ling's eyes startled open to see Fu standing at his bedside, his mask tilted up so that Ling could see Fu's serious and pale face. "Fu? What—"

"Get  _up,"_  Fu commanded harshly, "pack what you need, young lord, nothing more."

"Fu!" Ling sat up quickly. "What's happened?"

A muscle jumped in Fu's jaw. "The Emperor is dead."

The air seemed to freeze around them both as Ling gaped at his bodyguard, more awake than he'd ever been before. It was true that there was no love lost between him and his father, and the same could be said about his respective half-siblings; the Emperor had given no reason for any of his still-living children to love him. The number had dwindling down to seventeen sons and eleven daughters.

He'd been in poor health, that had been known, with his physicians seeking anything that could heal him and Ling had thought privately 'why bother?' but maybe that was just him being angry and bitter, especially about the attempted murder of his soulmate.

And Edward was worth all the trouble in the world.

"Murdered," Fu added when Ling didn't move, "killing by Xing Ying."

"He - _what?"_  If Ling hadn't been gaping already, he would've been at that. Xing Ying might've played a hand in killing many of Ling's siblings, if not himself, but he didn't think he had it  _in him_  to actually kill anyone, much less the Emperor.

" _Pack, Ling!"_  And that scared Ling more, because he couldn't remember the last time that Fu had used his actual name, preferring to call him only by 'young lord'. It was a way to remove himself and Ling could still remember his mother with her warm smile, telling Fu that one day he'd slip up and call her son by the right name.

This wasn't the kind of situation where Ling would've wanted Fu to slip up. "Pack? For what? To go where?"

"We're leaving Xing," he said sharply, realizing Ling was taking too long and taking it upon him to pull Ling's simplest outfits from the closet, completely bypassing the traditional garb that was saved for special occasions, throwing some clothes at Ling to change into.

"What,  _why?"_  The idea of leaving his home country terrified Ling. Of course, he'd made the trek to Amestris with Fu to retrieve Lanfan, and he couldn't say that he had been  _disappointed_  to meet Edward, Edward was…tongue-tyingly  _enthralling._  But not even wanting to see him again could make Ling pause.

But the large explosion that rocketed into the air could.

Ling jolted where he was, shooting out of bed to the window, seeing the plumes of smoke and fire rising up into the sky, but Fu pulled him away from the window. "Get dressed, Ling,  _now."_

There was a question on Ling's tongue that was the first thing to be thought of in a situation like this and that was:  _Where the hell was Lanfan?_

* * *

Lanfan knew the plan, she always knew the plan. She was the bodyguard to a prince and it was her sworn duty to protect him even at the cost of her own life.

Her grandfather had sat her down soon after their return from Amestris to amend their contingencies. She'd always known that Xing was a particularly volatile place to live in, like a powder keg that was waiting to explode. Assassinations of the Emperor's children was practically the norm, as well as the murder of anyone with matching soulmarks to those same children (it made Lanfan very glad indeed that even when Ed hadn't been strong enough to stop one of the assassins, at least he'd had people to defend him).

They'd both known that eventually it wouldn't be very safe for Ling to remain in Xing, and, really, the only option that either of them particularly liked, was Amestris. They didn't like the idea of being in a country ruled by a military state and rife with xenophobia (both Lanfan and Ed had gotten looks in the hospital, even with Ed's State Alchemist pocket watch), but the Elrics were in Amestris and had promised that if they ever needed anything, they could come to them. Fu didn't quite trust Al, though, something about his chi being off, but Lanfan trusted the Elrics, so that had ended that discussion. They had allies in Amestris, and the same couldn't be said about the other countries.

Unfortunately, it seemed today was the day where it all came to a head, so Lanfan followed the plan.

She'd played Ling before without too much difficulty, playing his part again wasn't so difficult. She was the distraction and if anyone was planning on taking Ling (Lanfan) out, they wouldn't be noticing Fu sneaking around with the real Ling. They'd all ride out into the desert in different directions initially but in a few days' time would meet up at the Ruins of Xerxes.

So, she grabbed a bag of clothes and weapons, hiding her mask deep within as she pulled on Ling's clothes, yet again, tying her hair in his style and grabbing the first horse in the stables and taking off, with hellfire at her horse's hooves.

She didn't look back, only ducking as a few thrown knives edged too close to her throat.

* * *

"Yo, Ed!"

Ed blinked, looking up from situating the few folders he had in his arms to scowl viciously at the speaker. "Lieutenant Colonel Hughes, can I help you?"

Hughes grimaced a bit, unable to help rubbing the soulmark under his jaw, which didn't help things. Ed's eyes followed the movement and it seemed to make him angrier. "I guess you and Roy still aren't talking, huh?"

Ed growled, turning on his heel and walking in the opposite direction.

"Whoa!  _Hey!"_  Hughes had to jog to catch up. "I didn't mean anything by it, honestly." He hoped his expression was earnest. "How are you and Al doing?"

Ed chewed on the inside of his cheek, biting back a scathing retort; he had  _many_ , but most of them were Mustang-centric. They still hadn't talked and it was nearly a week later, the day of the State Alchemist Exam, and Ed had nothing but radio silence from him. Hughes, he remembered, had been in Ishval with Mustang.

Honestly, Ed was having trouble viewing anyone who played a part in the war positively, not now that he knew about Mom. It was hard and it  _hurt,_  but if Mustang wanted to run away from his problems, that was  _his_  fault.

"I'm fine," he said shortly like he wasn't a fire raging, threatening to spread and consume everything in sight.

"Are you sure?" Hughes eyebrows furrowed in concern like Mustang would sometimes do if Ed and Al came back to the office looking particularly ragged. That didn't help.

Ed didn't have a chance to give a snide retort when a soldier paused to his side. "Lieutenant Colonel Elric, sir?"

Ed wondered how much it hurt to call an almost fifteen-year-old 'sir'. "Yeah?" he demanded, tilting his head.

"I was sent to collect you, sir, General Hakuro was wondering if there were enough copies of the exam."

He briefly distracted Ed who looked through his folders, bringing the last one to the front, using a few gloved fingers to count the stapled pages. One…three…seven…eleven…fifteen. There were only fifteen applicants this year, and, from what Ed understood, the number was getting small and smaller as the years went on. He hadn't made too many tweaks to the exam, though he had  _seriously_ considered it, which the applicants should've been grateful for.

Ed handed the folder to the soldier. "There's enough, tell Hakuro I'll be there in a sec'."

The soldier looked particularly scandalized at the casual way he spoke about the general, but he still took the folder and saluted before heading off.

Ed heaved a sigh. "I've got to go, too." He took one step forward before gritting his teeth and twisting around to glower at Hughes. "This is his mess, he can clean it up."

It was easier to remember the times when Ed could explode at Mustang and he could explode right back, but this time Ed wasn't sure screaming would even get the point across. Of course, Ed did feel like a balloon filling the gas that one day soon would pop. He figured he'd end up screaming at Mustang or beating him senseless. He was personally hoping for the second one.

And then he twisted on his heel and followed after the soldier, other people veering out of his way with one glance at the expression on his face.

If he'd glanced back, he would've seen a woman who could've been compared to the woman that once held him in his mother's hospital room after she'd given birth to Al.

Major General Olivier Armstrong didn't usually make the trek to Central, preferring to remain distantly in the North at Fort Briggs, but, unfortunately, this wasn't a meeting she could skip out on, though she loathed to surround herself with the other higher-ups who were made entirely of men far too power-hungry for her tastes. Thankfully, Major Miles was with her to suffer as well.

Neither of them had been expecting to hear about a Lieutenant Colonel Elric; both had heard of Trisha Elric's passing some years ago, sadly. By the time it had reached Olivier, the funeral had already happened and it seemed…inappropriate to intrude afterwards.

But that boy…Lieutenant Colonel Elric…he was the right age, he had the same sun-warmed skin and golden hair and eyes. It could've been either of Trisha's sons, but she remembered her fond smile as she looked on Edward saying "This one's got a fiery spirit, I know it."

"General?" Miles' voice was quiet and careful beside her and Olivier knew why. Miles hadn't known Trisha for as long as Olivier had, but as they were both part Ishvalan -his fourth to her half- serving in the Amestrian military, there were things about themselves that only the other knew.

"Later, Major Miles," Olivier restrained a sigh as she straightened her back, tapping a finger against the hilt of her sword.

"SISTER, HOW LOVELY TO SEE YOU!"

"Fuck!" Olivier swore loudly.

* * *

No matter how he felt about Ed currently, Roy  _was_  proud of him, and he couldn't help but sneak onto one of the balconies that proctors used to overlook the applicants in case of cheating and also by the Fuhrer if he ever wished to oversee, unseen from above.

Ed was speaking quietly with General Hakuro, his expression serious. Roy wasn't accustomed to the look, particularly with Ed wearing the military uniform he detested so much.

"Are they really letting an officer's kid in here?" there was a rather carrying whisper and Roy made sure he was carefully unseen when Ed's spine tightened and he twisted slowly on his heel to glare with so much fire that Roy could practically feel the heat from where he was.

"I'm Lieutenant Colonel Edward Elric," the boy practically snarled out, and that shut them up quick. "And I'm the one in charge, so sit down  _and shut up!"_

Roy almost sighed. Ed with his hair-trigger temper as always, but at least this time he wasn't reduced to screaming rage.

One of the soldiers passed out the test to each of the applicants.

"You have four hours to complete the exam. Your time begins… _now."_

And with a scramble, everyone flipped over the sheets and began to write. Roy remembered what it had been like for him and he remembered who completely fried Ed had looked when he'd finally completed his, only taking so long because he was being careful with writing with his automail hand.

It looked like things were well in hand, but he didn't notice fiery golden eyes watching him as he turned around and left.

* * *

The Xerxian sun was achingly hot and bearing down on Lanfan as she trekked on through the desert, alone and unaided, her bag dragging in the sand. She was delirious from the heat and from the pain that it was a miracle that she hadn't passed out more than once.

The first time was when she'd cut off her arm, the ligaments and muscle torn and shredded impossibly by a dark-clad figure bearing the Ying crest until it hung uselessly off her. She'd bound the stump of her arm as best as she could with only one functional arm, being in so much pain that she had to wonder how she'd been able to do it (she thought inexplicably of Ed with his automail arm and leg and Lanfan's morbid curiosity "Did it hurt when it happened?" and there'd been something close to bitter agony in his eyes "Passing out was the best part," was all he said about it), how she'd been able to stanch the flow of blood, how she'd been able to tuck her useless, amputated arm into the reins, sending the horse to track a blood trail far from her.

Lanfan had no idea if it would work, only clutching Ling's ruined shirt to her bleeding stump.

She'd rode hard for days without stopping…how long had it been? It was a week's ride to the Ruins going at a normal speed, but Lanfan had been booking it since she'd left the Yao compound. She  _knew_  her grandfather and Ling had gotten out, anything less would make her lose focus, and Lanfan couldn't have that.

Her leg sank into the sand and Lanfan toppled down, whimpering as her sensitive and agony-ridden stump hit the sand with the rest of her. She saw stars, her eyes rolling just a little from the pain.

"All right," she muttered to herself, "rest for…five minutes."

And before she passed out she caught a glimpse of golden eyes.

_Ed?_

* * *

"Only  _one_ pass?" Ed frowned, looking over the exam, but they weren't wrong, none of the other applicants had scored high enough to perform for the practical side. "Shou Tucker?"

"That's correct, sir," the lieutenant nodded her head. "He filled out an absentee form for his practical exam on the grounds that he specializes in bioalchemy and he plans to transmute a chimera to reveal the results in a few days' time."

"A  _chimera?"_  Ed startled a bit at that. He didn't know much about bioalchemy, and it wasn't possible to create something organic from something inorganic, no matter how many times it had been attempted, but a chimera? Alchemically synthesizing at least two living creatures into a new and functional form hadn't been seen before. There'd been a lot of research into it, but so far none of it had yielded any positive results.

"If that's all right, sir?"

"Why're you asking me?" Ed retorted flummoxed.

Lieutenant Maria Ross' mouth twitched faintly. "Sir, you're the one in charge of the State Alchemist Exam, you get final say in matters like these."

Ed blinked. "Oh." It was weird having any kind of power in the military and Ed wasn't entirely sure he liked it, but he wasn't sure he disliked it either; he was ambivalent at the moment. "I guess that's fine…doubt it'll work, but okay." He gave a careless shrug, he handed the papers back, frowning slightly at the image of Shou Tucket that was clipped to the paperwork he had to fill out in order to take the exam. He gave him a strange feeling, but he couldn't quite place it…

It was probably nothing.

* * *

"Lanfan?  _Lanfan!"_

Lanfan moaned as she came around, the bone-deep pain aching from her stump, and she brought a hand up immediately to protect it in case it was necessary and it was only then that she finally blinked her eyes open hazily.

Her grandfather's face was stony above her, fingers lightly tapping her cheek while his eyes trailed to her arm. Ling was pale-faced and terrified, eyes frozen on her stump, unable to get past it.

"M'here," Lanfan finally managed to force out with a wince, her throat drier than the desert…or not. She tilted her head back to see the storm clouds swirling above them, thunder booming. There hadn't been a drop of rain in the desert for the longest time, and the only time Lanfan had ever seen it was when she'd been with Ed, riding back to Amestris. "Y'know, if Ed was here he'd be complainin'."

"What?" Fu asked completely flummoxed and Ling blinked at the mention of his soulmate.

"Ed," Lanfan coughed, "rain makes his ports ache…guess I'll be feelin' it soon."

She sat up and regretted it, but her grandfather and Ling both helped get her situated.

"What happened to your arm?" Fu asked directly.

"Cut it off," Lanfan said with exhaustion clear in her face and her voice. "That Ying assassin completely shredded my arm…so I slit his throat." She thought that was fair after the attempted assassination of Ling several years ago.

Ling's hand jumped to his own throat over where the thin scar was still clear to see if you got too close, not that anyone really had.

Lanfan blinked owlishly. "Are we…are we in the Ruins of Xerxes?"

"That was the plan," Fu told her grimly, examining her injury gingerly.

"But I passed out," Lanfan said in complete confusion, looking around for any indication of people living there, finding none, "and the last thing I remembered was a pair of golden eyes."

Ling and Fu shared a glance. "Then the Xerxians were mercifully kind."

They were ghosts was what they were. Lanfan could count on one hand the number of times she'd seen a Xerxian and that was including Ed and Al (Al still counted, right? Lanfan hadn't actually seen his face with him wearing that armor all the time, but Ed had said they were very alike in appearance). She'd thought there'd be more signs of the civilization, evidence that they were alive, but even in the Ruins it was impossible to tell.

Fu offered her a refilled canteen of water and Lanfan took it, gulping its contents greedily as she looked down to her stump, feeling oddly removed from the whole situation, noticing there was a fresh bandage wound tight over the wound. "Are we still going to get into Amestris at Welosl? Like last time?"

Fu nodded his head. "We'll get through, then we'll see just how willing your friend is to house three Xingese refugees."

Ling bit his lip; he was being oddly quiet.

"I'm pretty sure the only thing he'll take issue with is the young lord's appetite, Grandfather." Ling could eat Ed and Al out of house and home if he wished. She smiled faintly and it fell away when Fu went to make sure they had enough water for the journey, leaving her to turn her attention to Ling. "Young lord?"

Ling made a small humming noise, but apart from that, didn't speak or make any other noise. Him being so quiet was out of character and it was starting to worry Lanfan. She'd seen him go deadly quiet before and the results of that had been both frightening and impressive; her grandfather had trained him well.

"Ling," she pressed with his actual name, "are you all right?"

Ever-tactile, his fingers found the only hand she had left. She squeezed it, hoping it reassured him.

"I'm  _sorry,"_  Ling said finally, his voice raw and full of the pain only a boy forced from his homeland could feel. "Your arm—"

"My arm can be replaced." In fact, that was what Lanfan was thinking about the most, having an automail replacement. It probably wasn't the best idea to be considering replacing the arm when she'd just lost it, but Lanfan  _needed_  her other arm to protect Ling the best way possible, without it she was half as skilled and Lanfan needed to be  _practical_.

Automail was the best option but she knew it would be incredibly painful, given how Ed had been talking about it on the way to Amestris with her arm broken, every jostle from the horses sending spikes of pain through her body, and he'd had the operation at eleven, she couldn't imagine how painful that must've been to an eleven-year-old.

_(One day she will ask)_

"Your life…your  _safety,"_  the words clogged in her throat a little, remembering the terror at seeing Ling clutching at his bloody throat, "matter more than my arm."

His hand clenched painfully tight around Lanfan's. "A ruler," Ling started and then had to pause, almost trembling, "a ruler's duty is to his people, without them he is no king at all."

Lanfan's eyes softened, understanding his meaning quite plainly.

_You aren't expendable, not to me._

"Thank you," she said finally, "young lord."

* * *

Al was due to return in a few days, but it was still a relief to hear his voice over the phone.

" _Brother…we're going to need to sit down and have a conversation about…Mom when I come home_ ," Al said about as gently as he was capable and Ed tried not to sigh, reaching down to pet Nitro when he meowed insistently.

"I know," he said, "there's some stuff I learned on my end too."

" _Oh,"_  Al voice came across as surprised.  _"Brother? Are you okay? You sound…stressed."_

Ed pinched the bridge of his nose. "Its been a rough week, Al, I'll tell you all about it when you get back."

" _Okay…how was the exam, that was today, right?"_  Al sounded like he was forcing himself to be upbeat.

"I got to threaten some people, so not bad." Ed snorted and Al's scandalized  _"Brother!"_  "One person passed…a guy that specializes in bioalchemy…apparently he's going to make a chimera for the practical exam."

" _What, really?"_  that got Al's attention.

"I know, right? I was—" There was a sudden knock on the door and Ed paused. "There's someone at the door, Al, I've got to go, okay? Look after yourself until you get back."

" _Sure, Brother,"_  Al laughed before Ed hung up, moving quickly to answer the door, wrenching it open and staring.

There was a man with skin close to his in color and snow-blindness goggles to hide his eyes, sideburns and a spike ponytail that was a shocking white, like Gerah's. The woman beside him made Ed pause because he'd seen her likeness in all those pictures with Mom's things. Long blonde hair hanging loose and blue eyes that made him think of Winry, but that was where their likeness ended. This woman's eyes were sharp and icy and at her hip was sabre that had clearly seen some use.

"Can I help you?" Ed asked carefully, stiffening when her eyes fell on his automail arm, exposed with his jacket from his uniform off, leaving him in the black undershirt.

The man cleared his throat. "I apologize for the intrusion," he said swiftly, "but we both knew your mother…is it all right if we come in?"

Ed looked from him to the woman -she was clearly in charge and far more decorated- not sure how he felt about the careful way she was surveying him, like he was a barricade on a map that she was debating a frontal assault on.

He heaved a sigh, opening the door a bit further. "Yeah, all right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew Lanfan was going to lose her arm on the way out of Xing since we aren't really following much of canon and I wanted to keep how much of a badass she is using her amputated limb to throw people off.
> 
> This is going to be the last update before school starts up again, which will hopefully be my last semester of nursing school :) and then I have to take a massive exam to get certified so…if I have free time, I'll work on the next chapter, but be aware that I've got a lot of stuff going on in my life.


	21. Godmother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do not pressure me about updates. I have a life and mental health to look after.

She knew his name, she'd been there when Trisha had smiled tiredly and placed her squirming newborn into Olivier's arms, accustomed to the weight and size of weapons more than children. A tuft of golden hair on his head and equally golden eyes wincing open.

The boy who'd opened the door had been both stranger and familiar to Olivier's memory. Edward Elric's eyes were shaped more like Hohenheim's, but the curve of his cheekbones, his jaw, that was  _all_ Trisha.

She was thankful that Miles had spoken because the instant she'd seen the boy, she'd seen Trisha shine through and her tongue had caught in her throat.

"Can I get you tea, or somethin'?" Ed asked awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head with his automail hand.

"If you have any on hand," Miles smiled kindly.

Ed nodded absently, turning and heading into the kitchen to fetch a kettle and Olivier took one of the armchairs in the main room, threadbare and not quite comfortable, probably due to be replaced whenever necessary, leaving Miles to sit on the edge of the couch, leaning forward with interest to inspect the multitude of pictures spread across the table there.

Olivier recognized a great deal of them; they'd been taken in North City, when Trisha had still been serving.

Miles took off his sunglasses and there were a few minutes of complete silence before Ed returned, offering them mismatched mugs, dropping awkwardly to the edge of the couch, completely opposite Miles.

Ed cleared his throat uncomfortably. "So…people that knew my mom just dropping by out of the blue because…?"

"I thought you and your brother were still in Resembool," Olivier spoke bluntly and to the point. "I'm in Central for a meeting of generals, I wasn't expecting to find her son wearing the military uniform at fourteen."

Ed started faintly in surprise, mostly at how she knew how old he was.

"Where's your brother?" Olivier had to work at making her voice not quite so sharp. She wasn't dealing with her men, she was dealing with the godson she'd never known.

"Visiting our alchemy teacher," Ed said carefully with narrowed eyes. The only framed picture in the house was of Trisha with the boys but it must've been taken years ago. "He'll be back in a few days."

"And your father?"

"Wherever the fuck he ran off to after ditching us." Ed rolled his eyes, bitterness burning his words. "Bastard's been gone since I was five."

" _Ah,"_  Miles said uncomfortably, opting to take a drink of tea than speak to that. He had met Van Hohenheim exactly once but he and Trisha had seemed happy enough.

"How did Trisha die?" Olivier asked suddenly and bluntly; it seemed to be the best way to go at the moment.

Ed flinched hard.

"Uh, General?" Miles was never one to offer warnings to Olivier, she was usually the one that knew when she'd overstepped her bounds, but he could tell from Ed -from the tension in his body, how his hands clenched tight, how the muscle in his jaw jumped- that it wasn't a topic he liked to speak of.

Ed met her eyes evenly but it was hard to gauge anything behind the hard blue. And at long last, his shoulders sagged.

"She sent us out," he told them, "she wanted us to get some apples to make  _hamantaschen_  but Al wanted  _persimmons_ , it was a whole thing." A brief smile twitched across his mouth but it faded just as quickly. "We took the long way back so we could go by Winry's -Rockbell, she's our best friend- and when we made it home…" Ed swallowed thickly, running his thumb over his automail knuckles. "She'd collapsed and we had to run and get help…"

"Illness?" Miles prompted. "Or—?"

"That's what they thought. A lot of people got sick in Resembool around that time." Ed shrugged. He could be impartial with facts, they were the easiest to convey.

Mom had been so out of it towards the end and their house had been packed with practically every Ishvalan that Ed and Al had ever met. Death was a family affair and Trisha's parents had been long gone by the time her death rolled around.

The other Ishvalans had kept Ed and Al as distracted as they possibly could during that time and even now Ed was grateful for that. They'd just been kids, they shouldn't have had to deal with all the rites that came with death.

It was the last day when she was so weak, her skin more translucent than anything else that she summoned them to her room and embraced them with as much strength as she was capable. They'd held onto her tight until her grip failed.

Illness might've spread quickly during that season, but Mom was the only one that had died from it, which was practically unheard of; generally sudden illnesses like hers claimed at least three (Resembool was pretty suspicious on their rule of three).

"You don't agree."

Ed blinked, drawn out of his thoughts to stare at the woman. She was surveying him in a calculating manner, almost appraising; Ed wasn't sure how he felt about it. It was true, there were a lot of strange events that happened around the time Mom died -Al claiming to have seen a young man with golden eyes like them, some of Hohenheim's books disappearing so suddenly that Mom had torn the study apart with a look of fear on her face, a stone with an unfamiliar crest left on the front door that had made Mom keep them in all day- but,  _as far as he knew_ , Mom died of illness.

Ed sighed long and hard, picking up a picture of the general and his mother arm in arm. They seemed almost happy and for a moment Ed considered breaking their rule about just how many people they'd agreed to tell about how their bodies were the way they were. It didn't matter if they and his mother were good friends, Mustang's team already knew, as did Teacher and Sig and the Rockbells, and that was already more than enough in on the secret.

"I'd like to think that of my mother's death was natural, or as close to natural as it could've been," he said finally, trying not to think about the mangled ruin of contorted bones, grotesque limbs, and blood spread across the floor. "Until someone gives me evidence that it's not."

He met her eyes evenly that time and she actually huffed a snort. "You're so like her its uncanny."

"People usually say Al's more like her," Ed had to counter, though he did appreciate it; better to be like Mom than Hohenheim.

"Does he have an icy temper?" she asked, taking a sip of tea.

"Oh, for  _sure,"_  Ed bobbed his head quickly with a grimace.

Both of them shared a look that Ed couldn't decipher before the woman held out her hand to him. Ed took it.

"Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong," she introduced herself at long last.

Ed narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "You aren't related to Major Armstrong, are you?"

Olivier gave something that was a cross between amusement and annoyance. "Younger brother,  _unfortunately."_

Ed tried to mentally equate Major Alex Louis Armstrong with his large bulging muscles who always seemed to be glistening for some unknown reason as being the younger brother to Olivier, who he couldn't deny was an imposing figure with her face carved as though from ice and a sword at her hip, but still not as… _bulky_  and expressive as the Major.

He decided not to question that.

"And that's Major Hadar Miles." The Ishvalan gave a little wave.

This time, Ed offered him not his hand, but his arm, as it was customary grasp forearms in their culture. You grasped forearms and pressed your foreheads together if it was someone you know well, but Ed didn't know Miles well, if at all.

Miles looked surprised but pleased, taking Ed's arm and giving it a squeeze.

"I hear you serve under the Hero of Ishval," Miles said mildly, "what's that like?"

Ed skated over that with a "We're not talking right now."

"Never liked Mustang," Olivier snorted into her tea. "He's a shameless flirt."

Well, Ed couldn't deny that. He'd seen Mustang flirting and then he'd looked to Havoc with a dubious expression on his face and asked him "You mean that actually gets him girls?"

To which Havoc lamented of his lack of girlfriends due to the Colonel's 'game'. It probably should've dawned on Ed at that point that he was gay, but he supposed he needed to actually see Ling Yao and get so flustered by his flirting for it actually to hit him ( _like a fucking train)._

The flirting had never worked on Hawkeye though, and Ed was pretty sure that she was the one Mustang would've liked it to work on.

"Did Mom ever talk about her family much?" Ed directed his question towards Miles before leaning down to scratch behind Nitro's ears when he padded over to his legs -undoubtedly missing Al-, nuzzling against Ed's metal leg.

"A little, why?" Miles frowned then. "Did she not tell you anything about them?"

"We were pretty young." Ed kept his eyes on Nitro, trying to force a would-be calm. "I think she thought she'd have more time."

"I don't know much about her father's side, but I know a little about her mother's family." Miles gave the boy a smile. "If you've got the time."

"I've got more tea," Ed grinned.

* * *

Hours later when Ed had started to nod off, the pair had decided it would probably be best to excuse themselves.

"Curiosity sated, sir?" Miles couldn't help but ask as they walked away from the house under the darkening sky.

"Not even  _slightly,"_  Olivier scoffed. "He's hiding something I'm just not sure what it is."

Miles heaved a sigh. "Did you at least enjoy yourself?"

Olivier's lips twitched faintly. "I did…meeting Alphonse will be interesting." He'd still been small when Trisha had resigned, but Edward had been large enough to hug Olivier's pantleg, giggling madly.

She shut her eyes briefly, remembering the last time she saw Trisha Elric.

"What's this?" she asked when the alchemist handed her a thick packet.

"My resignation," Trisha informed her flatly, and Olivier looked up, jarred. "With the war heating up in Ishval and…" She paused, taking in a deep breath. "Kimblee bombed Emunah two days ago."

Emunah, Olivier remembered, was where Trisha's mother had been from.  _"Ah."_

"I don't even know if my aunt or uncle or even my cousins survived," Trisha's words were so hollow that they echoed. Olivier couldn't remember the name of cousins, just that they were two brothers, one of which she was sure was a monk, and the other who was a scholar that was always debating alchemic theory with Trisha.

"I'm sorry." Olivier wasn't sure what else there was to be said. They both knew that she was loyal to the military and would've had to report Trisha if she'd deserted. It was difficult for Ishvalans in the military. Olivier had heard rumors of them being rounded up and then 'disappeared'. She suspected executed but who would speak on that subject? No one.

One week ago, the Fuhrer had come to see Trisha, perhaps to convince her to retire quietly, and all Olivier knew was that Trisha had had Van take the boys out of town for a few days.

"Don't be." Trisha's smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "It's better this way…besides, I've still got my mother's house in Resembool and I hear a lot of Ishvalan refugees are settling there." She brushed her intricate braid over her shoulder so it fell down her back before saluting her friend. "It's been a privilege and an honor to serve under you, sir."

Olivier had never been a very physical person, in fact, she tended to _avoid_  it, but just this once, she gifted her friend with a hug.

"Don't be a stranger," Trisha told her before vanishing out the door.

She opened her eyes and silenced a sigh.

But she had. As soon as Trisha had walked out of her life, Olivier had cut off all contact with her. Not on purpose, but it seemed that she was so continually swamped with things to do that she'd just never had the time.

And in that time, Hohenheim had left Trisha.

And in that time, Trisha had died.

And in that time, Ed and Al had grown up without family.

And in that time, Ed had lost two limbs and refused to say how.

Ed looked too old in that uniform and in many ways, he looked too much like his mother, and  _that_  hurt more.

"We'll see him tomorrow," Miles was quite certain, but it just reminded her that she had deal with another full day of old men posturing with barely enough space to fit in the room on top of their egos.

Olivier was really starting to miss Briggs.

* * *

Lunch was awkward. Well, it had always been a bit awkward at the start because Ed and Al tended to wander off on their own and people gave Al a wide berth. It had gotten a bit better when they'd started sitting with Havoc and Breda, and then Fuery and Falman, but Ed had decided to pretty much avoid Mustang's men, especially since he was sitting with them today.

But towards the back he could see Miles and Olivier sitting together, firmly away from the crowd. Miles looked up, then, and smiled, motioning with his hand that Ed could come and sit with them. Ed tried not to be obvious about how relieved he was.

He walked past Mustang without even glancing his way, settling down across from Olivier.

"Uh, boss...did the chief just sit down with Major General Armstrong?" Havoc was struck in surprise, hissing across the table to Mustang, who had been so focused on drinking his coffee (and avoiding looking towards Ed at all times), coughed and spluttered out a " _What?"_

Hawkeye wordlessly handed over a napkin, which he almost disregarded in leaning back to stare. Major Miles was still wearing his snow-blind glasses inside, but Mustang knew it was to hide the red. He said something and Ed's laughter echoed.

Something inside him burned at that, which was  _ridiculous._  Roy couldn't possibly be jealous of  _Major Hadar Miles_  who was undoubtedly being friendly to the son of his former colleague. He didn't have a  _right_ to be when he was the one actively avoiding Ed in the first place (thank God Al wasn't back yet because Roy got the feeling the cold shoulder he'd been setting was going to be  _one hundred times worse_  with the younger Elric).

He frowned when he realized he'd gotten Olivier's attention. Ed's back was to him, but she had clear view of Roy where she sat opposite Ed, and Roy watched as a smirk twisted across her lips.

Roy looked away and tried to focus on eating his food, but it turned sour in his mouth.

He was a coward, a  _complete and utter coward_  and that was the truth of it. A stronger man would've been able to sit Ed and Al down and tell them how he'd committed such horrendous acts against their people and how disenchanted it had made him during the war, and how he wished he could take it all back but knew that he couldn't.

It reminded him of when he'd asked Ed what he thought would've happened if his father had stayed.

 _"Things would've been different if the bastard had stuck around, things would've been different if Mom hadn't gotten sick…but I could think about what could've gone differently a thousand times and it wouldn't change anything; Al and I're still here, still trying to get our bodies back, wanting it to be different won't actually_ change _anything."_

And he'd been right, then, too. Wishing something didn't happen wouldn't make it so, and Roy knew that all too well. There was really only one direction for him, and that was forward.

Too bad Roy had so many traps laid out on the path, some of which he'd crafted himself, that going back was honestly more preferable.

* * *

"Ishvalan is honestly more of a verbal language, I'm actually surprised you have anything where it's written down," Miles admitted, "not that it isn't written  _at all_ , but there's not really a 'how to speak Ishvalan' guide sitting around."

"They attempted to ban it for a few years, so that didn't help either," Olivier mused, watching Ed eat with fascination, wondering where on earth all that food went, because the kid was small, even for his age.

"They banned it?" Ed's eyes widened in surprise. "But it's just a language…" He'd grown up with it in the house, but he'd long forgotten what the words meant. The most he could remember were songs that Mom had once sang while working in the kitchen or when trying to get Ed or Al to go to sleep, and he couldn't even repeat the words from memory, just the tune.

"It's one of the ways you destroy a culture," Miles informed him with a grimace. "Being not able to speak your own native tongue is… _brutal."_

A deep frown marred Ed's mouth.

"But I'll see what I can find about anything that could help with the language," Miles said with an assuring smile, "and I'll give you the names of some people that could help you."

"Thanks, either way, it helps." Ed couldn't really convey just how important it was, but Miles understood either way. "So…both of you are going back to North City after this?"

"I'll always prefer Briggs to this  _cesspool."_  Olivier rolled her eyes for good measure. "As soon as the last meeting is done, we're on the first train out."

"Isn't it always snowing there?"

"Still preferable," Olivier countered without a change in expression that had Ed sniggering into the last of his orange juice.

"Um, Lieutenant Colonel Elric, sir?"

Olivier raised her eyes as the Lieutenant gave a quick salute to both herself and Miles, though it was clear her attention was only for Ed, who turned around to give it to her. "Lieutenant Ross?"

"Sir, I've been asked to relay to you that Mr. Shou Tucker is ready to showcase his exemption to the practical of the State Alchemist Exam."

Ed blinked in surprise and Olivier supposed that whatever it was was significant. "Thanks, I'll head over."

"Back to work," he said once she'd left.

"We'll walk you over," Miles said quickly, knowing the chances of seeing him before they left that night were rather slim and Ed glanced at their half-eaten food before conceding.

Olivier let Miles do most of the talking, she'd never been much of a conversationalist, but she didn't need to be.

"I don't need you to talk," Trisha had once told her, "I just need you to  _be there_ , for me."

"So," Ed said awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his head, "I guess this is goodbye…thank you, for everything. I liked the stories about Mom, and Al'll like them too." He offered his arm to Miles, but Miles surpassed him and wound his arms around Ed and gave him a tight hug.

Ed cast a surprised glance towards Olivier who stifled a smile - _mostly._  Miles had felt Trisha's loss more keenly than most. They'd been the only two of Ishvalan blood in Briggs and Trisha more so than Olivier had been the one to convince Miles to remain in the military, affect change from within. Ed must've seen how Miles' shoulders shook briefly and he carefully brought his arms up to give Miles a squeeze.

Then Miles released him and Olivier knew it took great strain not to wipe under his glasses. "You and your brother have to come to North City and visit…and we'll tell you  _even more_  stories about your mom."

"Al'd like that, well, we'd both like it," he acquiesced, "but Al likes hearing stories the most."

"Edward."

He turned his attention towards Olivier and she almost told him the truth, she almost said the word ' _godmother'_  but it turned to ash in her mouth. She'd always told Trisha she wasn't equipped to be anyone's godmother, let alone two quarter-Ishvalan boys. Trisha had never agreed.

Instead she held out one hand to him, which he took, and, feeling bold, she pressed one hand against his cheek, to his surprise.

"Don't be a stranger," she repeated his mother's words back to him.

And then she and Miles left him, rubbing his cheek with a bit of bemusement. She glanced out of the corner of her eye to Miles, lifting his glasses to wipe at his eyes.

"You can have a good cry on the train."

"Thank you, sir." Miles sniffed.

* * *

Roy Mustang's phone rang late into the night, not quite startling him awake, as he rarely slept very well, but he still answered it with a tired "Hello?"

" _Hello, is this Roy Mustang?"_  there was little he could tell from the static on the other end other than the speaker was female.

"Yes, who is this?"

" _We met once before."_  There was a pause almost like a pained intake of breath.  _"My name is Lanfan, I was at the hospital with Edward."_

The young Xingese girl that Ed had smuggled across the border to get medical attention. "Ah, yes, I remember. What can I do for you tonight, Lanfan?"

" _Edward gave me your number because he said his wasn't set up yet and to call you to get his, I was wondering if I could get it from you?"_

"Oh, of course, hang on—" Roy flipped on the light, leaving the phone in order to find his contact booklet where all his contacts were listed, flipping to the E's, and picking the phone back up. "All right, I've got it, do you have something to write it down?"

" _I'm ready."_

Once he relayed the number, she thanked him profusely and hung up, leaving Roy to stare at his phone blankly.

 _I hope Ed hasn't helped her cross over illegally again_ , was his last thought before he passed out on the bed.

* * *

Everything to do with chimeras was some  _fucked up shit_ , and that was Ed's  _professional_ opinion. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something really wrong with the whole thing, but he didn't know enough about bioalchemy to dispute it.

Still, the unshakeable way it had uttered the words "I want to die" made him sick to his stomach.

Ed was going to need a second opinion…there had to be someone that knew bioalchemy at Central University…maybe he'd try that tomorrow, see if he was right or not…

The telephone rang suddenly and Ed jolted, sending Nitro to the floor with an annoyed " _Mrow!"_  as Ed rushed to the phone. "Al?"

" _Lanfan actually,"_  came the tired reply on the other end.

Ed started in surprise. " _Lanfan?"_

" _Remember when you said to call if I needed anything?"_

"Yeah?" Ed asked carefully. "Why? What's wrong?"

" _I might need some help."_  She sounded like she was in pain.

"Tell me where you are," Ed said without even blinking, and then he was out of the door, barely remembering to slam it shut behind him as he raced out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Xing Trio are back in Amestris! Which is very exciting. Miles is a very emotional man and one day he's gonna have one arm around Ed and the other around Al and they're gonna be quarter-Ishvalan bros lol.
> 
> Olivier was the hardest to write, but she strikes me as the one to sit back and let Miles get all the talking out of his system. She's the type of person to quietly care.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: @greygryffindor
> 
> Fanart for The Golden Sun:  
> [Ed with his soulmark](http://heartsalotofstuff.tumblr.com/post/176499836407/heartsalotofstuff-got-bored-in-ochem-so-i)  
> [Another Ed with his soulmark](http://greygryffindor.tumblr.com/post/176719881234/i-didnt-have-anymore-darker-shades-but-i-love)  
> [Flustered Ed](http://heartsalotofstuff.tumblr.com/post/176846679692/the-smol-desert-child-from-greygryffindors-the)  
> [Chapter 12 End Scene](http://imperial-palace.tumblr.com/post/176785223819/based-on-this-fic)  
> [Chapter 16 End Scene](https://spacey-thoughts.tumblr.com/post/177291436282/drew-out-the-latest-chapter-of-the-golden-sun)  
> [Chapter 17 End Scene](http://greygryffindor.tumblr.com/post/179622788639/imperial-palace-i-like-the-idea-of)  
> 


End file.
